A FORMER SENATOR was paid over €146,000 in travel expenses over three years after quitting his day job as a psychologist and changing his address from Dublin to a family home in Donegal.

Don Lydon was a senator for the 20 years to 2007, and had been a member of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council from 1994 to 2003, when he quit his job as a psychologist in St John of God’s hospital in Stillorgan in south Dublin.

Having quit his council and psychology jobs in 2003, he had decided to change his address to Donegal – where he was raised – and wrote to the Oireachtas to inform him of this change in February 2004.

Figures obtained by the Irish Times under a Freedom of Information request showed that he had claimed between €37,000 and €39,000 in travel expenses every year since 2004 as a result, and €24,000 for the first seven months of 2007.

Lydon ran again in the 2007 Seanad Elections but was not elected, and retired from the chamber in July of that year. ”I am an old man and am retired and not involved now. Thank you very much,” he told the Irish Times when contacted for comment.

Lydon had been questioned previously by the Flood Tribunal over how he had tried to grab a cheque from Green Party TD Trevor Sargent at council meeting in 1993 when he produced a cheque that had been written by a developer.

The meeting in question was of Dublin City Council, on which Lydon sat between 1985 and 1993 before the Dublin local authorities were partitioned.

He had also questioned received a £5,000 donation from a man who had tried to get some land rezoned, a donation he initially denied because he claimed not to remember such things.