Government’s plane trips cost taxpayer €500,000

Enda Kenny seems to be doing a lot of jet setting around the world these past few weeks. Then again, if you had a private jet that was funded by the taxpayer, you’d happily accept invitations from abroad too.

The Irish Daily Star reports that last year, taxpayers forked out a massive €500,000 to keep the Taoiseach and his Ministers up in the air as they flew around the globe.

In fairness, almost half of this cost was covered by the Taoiseach himself, but even still. It’s a lot of money to take from taxpayers who are in dire financial straits and crippled by harsh austerity measures. Surely they could just start taking Aer Lingus or Ryanair flights like the rest of us? We’d save a lot of money if they were willing to just act like ordinary people.

While the Taoiseach paid back €255,580 of his travel expenses, the taxpayer forked out €112,200 in flight money so Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore could take seven trips abroad.

The figures, released to the Irish Daily Star under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Enda Kenny ranked up 30,000 air miles on all his trips last year. Unsurprisingly, the majority of his travels abroad were to Brussels to attend EU meetings and crisis talks.

The Government has two private jets at their disposal – the Gulfstream IV and the Learjet, both of which are operated by the Air Corps. The Gulfstream costs €4,050 per hour to keep in the air, while the smaller Learjet costs €1,270 an hour.

Someone should tell the Taoiseach and his Ministers that you can get flights to Brussels for less than €200. If they’d all just start taking regular plane trips, we wouldn’t need so many austerity measures.