Almost €400k spent hiring executive jets to fly Taoiseach around the world

Ken Foxe

The State spent almost €400,000 hiring executive jets to fly the Taoiseach around the world while awaiting delivery of the new Government jet.

One trip, involving landings in Zurich, Brussels and Cork, cost more than €82,500, according to figures released under FOI.

The seven trips were all booked through the provider Vistajet with the cost per hour on board working out at close to €20,000.

In early October, a Citation XLS was hired to transport Taoiseach Micheál Martin and a delegation of six others to Copenhagen.

The time on board was just over four hours, and the final bill for the taxpayer came to slightly above €60,000.

Another jet was hired later that month, this time for a trip from Baldonnel to Brussels and flying back through Cork to Baldonnel.

The Citation XLS jet carried seven passengers, including the Taoiseach, at a cost of around €60,000.

A one-way trip was booked in November when Micheál Martin was visiting South Africa and Angola, the Department of Defence data showed.

That three-and-a-half-hour flight between Johannesburg and Luanda on a Challenger 605 aircraft cost €66,000.

Two private jets were booked in December, the first for a short flight to Cardiff and back, at a cost of just over €48,000.

A second one-way flight was booked mid-month, transporting Micheál Martin and his staff to Brussels at a cost of €20,000.

The most expensive of the flights took place in January between Ireland, Switzerland, and Belgium.

The bill for 199 minutes flying time on board came to €82,513 – or the equivalent of around €24,900 per hour.

A final flight was booked in mid-February to bring the Taoiseach first to Brussels from Dublin and then back to his home in Cork before returning to Baldonnel Aerodrome.

Two aircraft were used – a Citation XLS and a Legacy 650 – at a cost of almost €62,000.

The bill across all seven flights came to €398,801, or an average of roughly €57,000 per trip.

The need for such charter flights is expected to reduce or disappear completely after the State took delivery of its Dassault Falcon 6X earlier this year.

The new aircraft has already been used for official travel to Spain, the United States, Finland, and Poland.

The Government jet was also called into action this week to repatriate two passengers on board the cruise ship linked to a deadly outbreak of hantavirus.