Ministers abroad - Travel costs must be justified

BACKBENCH Dáil deputies and senators from 17 different Oireachtas committees spent over €400,000 on 87 different trips abroad from January 2006 to January 2007, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Officially the politicians were going to conferences or they were “on fact-finding missions”. Until evidence is produced to justify those trips, nobody should be deceived into thinking that most were other than junkets at the taxpayers’ expense.

If anyone working for a properly-run company were going on such journeys, they would have to justify the expenditure with a report explaining the benefits of the exercise and detail the information picked up that would be of benefit to the company. It should be no different for politicians. It is important that there should be no suspicion that taxpayers are just being ripped off.