MORE THAN €1.3 million has been spent by the government hiring private jets for the Taoiseach and Tánaiste in the twelve months to June, as a replacement for its ailing Learjet.
Records obtained by The Journal under the Freedom of Information Act show that, in total, 18 trips were taken by the Government during that time: 11 were by former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar; five were by current Taoiseach Simon Harris; and were two by Tánaiste Micheál Martin.
The government has been forced to hire private jets due to the unreliability of its Learjet, which was formerly used for such trips but which in recent years has been plagued by technical issues.
The 18 trips included visits to Egypt and Israel, where commercial options were not feasible due to security and timing; however, the majority of the trips taken were short-haul flights to Brussels, Paris and Munich.
For example, in February, the government spent €73,000 hiring a Bombardier Challenger 350 for then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to attend the Munich Security Conference.
Eight of the trips in the 12 months to June saw the Taoiseach fly to Brussels for EU summits and conferences.
Those two-hour return flights generally cost in the region of €45,000, though more recently the Taoiseach made stops in Warsaw and Zurich before returning to Dublin, which added significantly to the total cost.
In total, more than €430,000 was spent on these trips to Brussels.
Meanwhile, records show Simon Harris also made stops in Cork and Kerry when returning from Brussels, before taking 45-minute flights back to Dublin.
Emissions from private jets are known to be significantly worse than commercial flights and any other form of travel.
Much fuel is burned during takeoff and landing, meaning short trips with many stops can contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.
Since 2020, all government departments have been required to offset the emissions produced by official air travel, paying into the government’s Climate Action Fund.
Records obtained by The Journal show that the three most expensive trips taken in the 12 months to June each cost more than €100,000.
In November last year, €158,000 was spent for the Tánaiste’s trip to Cairo and Tel Aviv, while almost €110,000 was spent on then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s two-day visit to the Balkans in January this year, when he met with senior politicians from Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
At the time of Varadkar’s trip, he spoke about the unreliability of the Learjet and said that it was “not possible to visit three countries in two days using commercial aircraft”.
The most expensive trip, totalling €197,500, was taken by Tánaiste Micheál Martin in April this year, when he visited the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza - though there were no other flight options on this trip due to security issues.
The Tánaiste and 12 others first flew to Cairo, where he met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry before flying to El Arish airport, some 50km west of the border with Gaza.
Another trip taken by then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in March this year came close to costing six figures, when the government spent over €97,000 hiring a Bombardier Challenger 605 to take him to Bucharest.
The Taoiseach’s official diary shows he met with both the President and Prime Minister of Romania during the two-day trip, before attending the European People’s Party conference of which Fine Gael is a member.
The figures above do not include the costs for two more trips in which a private jet was hired.
In March 2022, the government hired a private jet to take the Taoiseach to Paris and then the UK for almost €30,000.
Another trip not included in the above figures was the Taoiseach’s recent trip to the UK in July for the meeting of the European Political Community and bilateral with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The Department of Defence is still awaiting an invoice for this trip so its cost is unknown.
The hiring of private jets has become more commonplace as a result of technical issues that have plagued the Government’s own Learjet, leaving it out of action for long periods.
While an internal Defence Forces report suggested that the unreliability of the aircraft in 2023 may have been “somewhat of an anomaly”, with it previously having a “good rate of serviceability”, the decision was made to replace the ailing Learjet.
In November last year, a tender was published seeking the successor to the Learjet, with the government set to spend €45 million on the aircraft.
That came a month after Micheál Martin was forced to spend the night in Luxembourg as a result of technical issues with the Air Corps plane he was due to travel home on.
A spokesperson for the Department of Defence said “following a decision taken last year to no longer use the Learjet for ministerial transport, and pending its replacement, the Department procured the services of a Chartered Commercial Operator. This contingency service was procured competitively”.
They added, “a competitive process for the procurement of a new government jet is underway. The intention is that the acquisition phase will be complete and an award of contract will be made this year”.
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