Hotel stay in Oxford boutique hotel for Tánaiste and delegates cost €4,200
Ken Foxe
A single night hotel stay for Tánaiste Simon Harris along with Ireland’s Ambassador to the UK Martin Fraser and a group of six public servants cost the taxpayer nearly €4,200.
The room for then-Taoiseach Simon Harris at the five-star Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford cost €563 for just one night of accommodation last year.
The hefty bill was run up when Mr Harris met with UK prime minister Keir Starmer and attended a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) in Oxfordshire last July.
The boutique Old Parsonage is one of the best-known hotels in the university city and prides itself on being “a luxury home-from-home with impeccable hospitality".
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the booking was made when rooms were in short supply because of a large number of visiting delegations.
They said: “Accommodation for one night, 17 July, was booked on the basis of location, availability and quoted costings in a period of high demand in Oxford.
“[There were] forty plus Heads of State and Government and their delegations also in attendance at the EPC conference.”
Other more junior officials – who were also in attendance – stayed at a nearby Premier Inn where the overnight rate was nearly €275.
The bills were among tens of thousands of euros of expenditure charged to diplomatic credit cards at Ireland’s embassies in London and Paris over the course of a year.
In Paris, the embassy ran up significant bills during the Rugby World Cup and Olympics with €2,800 spent on temporary accommodation for one member of staff.
There was also an Airbnb bill of €5,576 for an official at the 2024 Olympics, where Ireland claimed a record-setting haul of medals.
A further charge of €2,090 with Airbnb covered the cost of a group of Irish artists visiting Paris at the time of the Rugby World Cup in 2023, according to records released under FOI.
Other bills on the card included €620 for four rugby match tickets as part of “political engagement” by the Embassy.
There was a charge of €250 for promotional pins for the Rugby World Cup, a €2,900 bill at the Tsuba Hotel in Paris for a political delegation, and around €230 for Irish cheese.
Other more mundane costs on the credit card included €36 for door wedges, €21.50 for electric light bulbs, and €1,317 for a replacement grill.
At the Embassy in London, among the charges listed were four umbrellas for drivers costing a combined €105, tea towels from John Lewis costing €144, and €138 worth of Christmas tree lights from Amazon.
A new fridge cost €1,317 while €105 was spent on a congestion charge penalty under the road charging scheme in the UK capital.
There was also a bill of around €2,150 at the Pullman Hotel for a visit by Minister Paschal Donohoe and four officials in August of last year.
Asked about the spending in , the Department of Foreign Affairs said: “Tens of thousands of Irish citizens travelled to for the Rugby World Cup (2023) and Paris Olympics and Paralympics (2024).
“In advance of these tournaments, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reinforced its operations in , to provide expanded consular services for traveling fans.”
