State gets fleet of luxury cars for free

The Government will spend nothing on top-of-the-range Audi cars to ferry EU officials around for the presidency, but the car manufacturer will receive “prime-time advertising” on air, a senior Fine Gael figure said.

Party chairman Charlie Flanagan made his comments, saying there had been inaccurate reports that the deal would cost money with the German manufacturer for a small fleet of the vehicles for the six-month presidency.

The Laois-Offaly TD defended the use of the vehicles and said no Garda drivers were being used to drive around EU delegates.