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THE DEPARTMENT of the Taoiseach spent almost €25,000 on its credit cards in Enda Kenny’s first year in charge.
Documents obtained by TheJournal.ie show the Department of the Taoiseach ran up €24,594 in credit card bills between March 9, 2011 – the day Enda Kenny took office – and the same date in 2012.
The documents, which cover the period from January 2011 to May 2012, detail a total of €32,272 in spending – and cover all manner of transactions from online newspaper subscriptions to hotel bookings and the occasional bar bill.
The €24,594 in spending in Kenny’s first 366 days in office is over €9,000 higher than the figure indicated by similar records in 2010.
It is significantly lower than 2008, however, when €79,410 was spent – including €22,461 on entertainment – on 29 different Departmental credit cards.
The Department currently holds eight credit cards – three of which are held by the private secretaries to the Taoiseach and the two junior ministers in the Department, chief whip Paul Kehoe and EU minister Lucinda Creighton.
Other cards are held by the heads of the Department’s IT, management services and library units, its chief finance officer, and the assistant secretary in charge of European and international affairs.
Among the highest charges on the cards within the 17-month window covered by the documents are two payments to Independent News & Media, each worth over €1,500, made about 14 months apart. This is likely to refer to newspaper subscriptions.
Other significant payments include a €1,216.55 bill for Publicis, a global PR firm which handled communications at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its bill, for €1,216.55, is higher than Enda Kenny’s hotel bill for his stay: that came to €1,019.92.
Further accommodation costs on the cards include a €922 stay at the Hotel Silken Berlaymont in Brussels, which coincided with a meeting of the European Council at EU headquarters, and a €788 stay at Belfast’s Europa Hotel during November’s meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council.
Stays at hotels in Brussels and the Hague feature regularly on the cards, which are to be expected given the volume of European Union events attended by Kenny, Creighton and other senior figures from the Department.
Other major features include four separate transactions between December 2010 and April 2012, totalling €2,159.52, from the online electronics shop Pixmania.
Among the transactions on the cards are less self-explanatory, however, including:
A Department of the Taoiseach spokeswoman declined to offer a direct explanation for any individual transaction when questioned by TheJournal.ie.
The spokeswoman said, however, that Department credit cards were used “for official purposes only” and were only allocated to officials whenever they would be “of practical use in meeting the requirements of official business” such as covering accommodation costs.
The use of official credit cards is closely monitored by the Department’s Finance Unit. Expenditure must be supported by receipts submitted by card holders each month and the associated expenditure approved in accordance with procedures.The allocation and use of official credit cards arereviewed on an ongoing basis, with a view to minimising the number of cards allocated, and credit limits are assigned in line with requirements forofficial use on a case by case basis.
The total number of cards held by the Department has fallen sharply in recent years; as recently as 2008, no fewer than 29 cards were issued to the Department. That figure fell to 25 in 2009, 19 in 2010 and to its current level of eight in 2011.
Credit card spending in 2008 stood at €79,410 – of which almost a third, €22,461, was on ‘entertainment’.
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€17 billion of Credit Suisse bonds got written down to zero overnight. Don’t cry that the institutional bond holders got BURNED; they had for the most part insured this risky debt with credit default swaps. That’s €17 billion that’s not on the head of the Swiss taxpayer; so a proper transfer of risk from the taxpayer to the risk seeking bond holders. There’s no point crying over spilled milk here but the great majority of Anglo Irish bond holders had hedged in the CDS market. That horse has bolted. PS: Journal, are you going to continue deleting my Ukraine posts when all I’m doing is stating facts and, as the penny finally begins to drop, presenting a reasonable alternative view?
@Ordinary Bloke: any posts that don’t fit the MSM narrative get deleted.. It’s a form of censorship
@a politicians promise is as good as a lie: their forum, their rules. You should know that by now. You can’t post comments on any other media site. Why isn’t there a national uproar over that!
@Ordinary Bloke: If your view is anything other than “Russia needs to get out of Ukraine and commit to a permanent ceasefire”, then it’s not reasonable and doesn’t deserve a platform.
Also, Putin needs to be surrendered to the Hague to answer for blowing up apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. These things are completely non negotiable and rightly so.
If AI is going to take over then it should start with the bankers. They appear to be not fit for purpose. Shower of wasters
With inflation running amok they can’t print money to get out of the current mess. Banks swapping money to shore up balance sheets has shades of Anglo Irish about it.
@Sean Salmon: ermmm Quantitive Easing, not relevant to Switzerland, banking scam of the greatest level ever. A Ponzi scheme in any other industry.
Is there anything to be said for another bank guarantee?
@Handsome McWonderful: yes, €£$k off
This is only going one way. Regulators learnt nothing from last crash. Bankers realised that they wont carry the can when everything goes south as they got bailed out last time. No moral hazard to worry about. The reality is that investment banking is a big casino with the public picking up the losses. Until bankers start doing time in the big house nothing is going to change. As for getting a conviction that is a remote possibility in this country, in fact you are more likely to win the lotto. There is always a technicality or an invalid warrant to get these carpet baggers off the hook.
have your say