Australian trip 'was no holiday' says McFadden

Athlone Senator Gabrielle McFadden has defended the taxpayer-funded bill of €5,700 for her flights to Australia with a group of Irish Senators and TDs last November.

The Fine Gael representative said the group "worked very hard" during the week-long trip which was designed to "promote and strengthen parliamentary relations and foster bilateral cooperation" between the two countries.

The delegation was led by TD Pat The Cope Gallagher and, in addition to Senator McFadden, it included TD Anne Rabbitte, Senators Paddy Burke and Gerry Horkan, and officials John Hamilton and Peter Malone.

Documents released following a Freedom of Information request by journalist Ken Foxe showed that the TDs and Senators flew business class and the total cost of flights for the delegation was in the region of €35,000.

The flights for Senator McFadden were booked just over a fortnight before her departure and came to €5,717.

The Irish visitors' accommodation was organised and paid for by the Australian hosts, who booked five-star hotels for the group in Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney.

During their six full days in Australia, in late November, the Irish delegation took part in an itinerary which included tours of the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Cricket Ground, meetings with representatives of homelessness services in Melbourne, a wreath laying at an Australian war memorial, and a BBQ hosted by Tony Smith, the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Other engagements listed on the official itinerary included a meeting with the chairman of mental health organisation The Black Dog Institute, a 'working breakfast' with the Ireland/Australia Chamber of Commerce, and "a visit to Taronga Park Zoo to view Australian animals".

When contacted by the Westmeath Independent, Senator McFadden said she had been invited to go on the trip as part of the Irish delegation and she wasn't involved in organising the flights, which were booked by a civil servant in the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission.

On the topic of flying business class, she said the Department of Finance had a rule that if a member was flying, on business, for longer than nine hours then business class flights are booked.

"If I was booking my own flights I would have booked economy, and I'd have no problem if (economy) flights were booked for me, but I actually think the work we did out there was very beneficial to both countries, and I think it was worth it," she said.

The meetings she participated in included one with Simon Birmingham, Australia's Minister for Trade, to discuss trade relations between the two countries.

The local Senator also met with representatives of trade organisation Austrade, which has an office in London, and she suggested that, with Brexit looming, it should consider moving this office across the Irish Sea.

"That suggestion was taken very favourably," she said. "I looked at the ways they deal with homelessness and I feel that some of the things they are doing could be implemented here, by the Midlands Simon Community, through a pilot scheme.

"The schedule was devised by the Australian hosts and it did include a tour of the Cricket Ground in Melbourne but that was mainly to talk about the Irish involvement in building it, and about Ronnie Delany (who won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne)."

She also said it was important to meet with members of the Irish diaspora - she encountered a man from Drumraney, and a woman from Coole in North Westmeath on her travels - and to see how money was being spent in facilities supported by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.

"We had a very packed schedule and we were quite exhausted by the end of it. But I feel very strongly about the work we did there. This was not a holiday or any of the things people said it was on social media.

"I think if people went through what we did, hour by hour, they would feel that we got value for money out of it," she concluded.

The visit followed a bilateral trip to Ireland last summer in which six Australian politicians and two officials were hosted by the Irish Government.