State paid for three trips by TD and wife

Public Accounts Committee chairman John McGuinness said his wife travelled on three state-funded trips abroad while he was a junior minister, but he regrets suggesting taxpayers should fund spousal travel.

The embattled TD admitted he had written with “frustration and anger” to civil servants requesting that his wife be allowed to accompany him on foreign trips.

He said his wife had travelled with him to Seattle, Edinburgh, and London when he was junior minister at the Department of Enterprise in 2007-8.