Minister Martin Cullen's Paddy's Day Spending

Martin Cullen’s expenses are not madly abusive, he’s no John O’Donoghue. The only part of this that made me raise an eyebrow was the €444 spent on the BAA VIP Suite.

These are the files from his trip to the US for St.Patrick’s Day earlier this year, the Indo covered it at the time.

He and his private secretary traveled from Dublin to Heathrow to Houston then moved onto Miami where they spent Patty’s Paddy’s Day. Total spend was approximately €10,500 according to the Indo.

The documents are pretty tricky to total if you’re not used to reading their likes, plus the ones I have are only for Cullen personally, so my total is lower than the one reported in the Indo.

As far as I can tell, his flights cost a little more than €6,500, there’s no details as to the flight of which he availed. The Houston Hilton; three nights at $139 each is €330. Then the €444 in the BAA VIP suite. The €868 on page two looks like subsistence expenses…

So my total is around €8000.

Eh, does this mean the private secretary’s trip cost just €2,500? Or the figure supplied to the Indo is incorrect? Tell me what I’ve missed here…

Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 1
Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 2
Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 3
Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 4
Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 5
Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 6
Cullen US St Patrick’s Day 2009 7

PS Sorry for the delay on these, I’m working a lot and my scanner is fairly slow. I knocked this post together in ten minutes whilst hungover, so there’s also a possibility I got my maths wrong.

—

These documents have been graciously supplied to us by Ken Foxe, Public Affairs Correspondent with The Sunday Tribune.