Ministerial helicopter flights 2005 to 2009

Helicopter flights taken by Ministers, including flight time, estimated cost, minister name, route (in some cases) and diary entry for that day (where available). Bertie Ahern was the biggest user – he got around.

From early 2005 to late 2009, about €383,243.31 was spent ferrying ministers around by helicopter alone. This excludes the cost of ministerial cars, which would often be involved at some level in each trip. It also does not include the use of government jets.

This is the approximate breakdown (in a few cases two Ministers traveled together):

Bertie Ahern €76,491.65
Willie O’Dea €45,873.34
Noel Dempsey €39,802.5
Eamon O Cuiv €29,590.83
Michael McDowell €25,529.99
Mary Coughlan €25,135.83
Mary Harney €23,352.5
Dermot Ahern €22,431.67
Brian Cowen €17,894.17
Mary Hanafin €14,177.5
Martin Cullen €13,455.83
Brian Lenihan €13,095.83
Batt O’Keeffe €12,822.5
John O’Donoghue €10,475
John Gormley €6,890
Seamus Brennan €3,975
Brendan Smith €3,180
Dick Roche €3,180
Micheal Martin €2,347.5

(H/T Colm King) with other data available at Kildarestreet.com

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5 thoughts on “Ministerial helicopter flights 2005 to 2009”

  1. just finished doing another exhibit this time of the 2007 – 30th Dail Ministers Travel http://dublinstreams.com/tds/exhibit/mats2007dail30.html

    its good that we got the info but now need the explanation to go with it to make it useful to people, laborious job to search for it in news/gov pr archives, we can dig through the diaries https://www.thestory.ie/category/fois/diaries/ i find it useful to use exhibit to do that, need to find a way to put all that info together, I guess thats what journalists like Ken Foxe have done.

    passenger info via kildarestreet version of the oireachtas record
    http://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2009-11-10.1378.0&c=102#c102

    FOI’s thanks to
    http://www.kenfoxe.com/2009/10/the-government-and-their-jets/

    would it be useful to do one just for internal helicopter trips, are they different enough to the international travel.

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