A few weeks ago some in the Irish media wanted you to get on the outrage train heading for angry town over a chair that was purchased for Ken O’Flynn TD. Today, keeping with the pattern of telling us all to be outraged over relatively small Government expenditures we are told that “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.”
I hope that is getting your blood boiling, dear reader. How dare they? How dare the then Taoiseach (Prime Minister of Ireland), and the Irish Ambassador to Britain (our biggest trading partner I believe) stay in a five star hotel in Oxford while representing the state.
“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.”
Five hundred quid a night for the Taoiseach, the Ambassador and what I will assume are senior public servants? What an outrage. I need to sit down. Why were they there you might ask.
“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.”
He was meeting the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and other big wigs at a meeting of the EPC. Now I am incandescent with rage, just as I am apparently supposed to be.
Yes, why don’t we just send in our Taoiseach and our most important officials wearing just a sackcloth and having slept in a tent to a meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
And the rest of the Irish team?
“Other more junior officials – who were also in attendance – stayed at a nearby Premier Inn where the overnight rate was nearly €275.”
So they were mindful of cost then.
The report goes on “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.”
An important meeting then. I hate this. I hate this desperate outrage making by the Irish mainstream media. Let’s just ignore the fact that the Garda Síochána are recruiting from IPAS centres and find some nonsense story about expenses instead.
I do not particularly like Minister Simon Harris TD. I find him very irritating. But that’s not the point, is it? We are not concerned here with Simon Harris the pub bore and random man, we are concerned here with the role he has – and this is representing Ireland not just as Taoiseach as he was, or Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Minister for Defence as he is now.
Those two roles are separate in Britain with gargantuan budgets. The Foreign Secretary (currently David Lammy MP, Lord help us) is considered a Great Office of State. The Secretary of State for Defence is John Healey MP. So the fact that those roles are run together in Ireland is already a saving.
If Ireland wants to be taken seriously on the world stage – and I presume that’s what readers want – then you do not penny pinch about stuff like this. Britain is far worse off financially than Ireland yet the papers rarely run this kind of petty ‘news story.’
The British media only run this story when the politicians take the piss completely and start charging the duck house and the moat dredging to the public purse. It is still the case that there is no official residence of the Taoiseach in Ireland which I think should be remedied.
Also, to point out the obvious, they are staying at Oxford. Oxford is not cheap – it is not Slough or Dunstable. It is the dreamy spires home to Professor Stephen Hawking and J.R.R. Tolkien and our own Oscar Wilde who read at Magdalen College, Oxford. Oh just watch the old Brideshead Revisited and you will understand. The point is, people visit places which pushes up prices. If you have a delegation of politicians that increases the prices even more.
Yet, somehow many of the hotels there will still be cheaper than some 5 star hotels in Dublin, and I don’t know why. Of course if you are an alumni of Oxford University or indeed Cambridge University like myself (sorry – had to get that in there) then you don’t have to stay at the expensive hotels. You can stay in your old college for a cheaper rate.
Where was I? Yes. Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, the South East these places are not cheap to stay in especially if there are an entire bunch of politicians also staying there.
We are also told in Breakingnews that “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.”
I’m not sure why they are paying the congestion charge – as surely they have diplomatic immunity. I think there was a case on that. And the drivers having an umbrella – how dare they? They should just stand out in the London rain if they know what is good for them and all the officials can arrive for their meetings with their British counterparts (the knights, and the OBEs and the CBEs and the rest of them) soaking wet. That will look great.
I am absolutely delighted though that the embassy staff are getting their tea towels from John Lewis. Goodness knows how I miss the John Lewis Home section, although Dunnes is also excellent. Heaven forfend that little old Irish diplomats would be allowed to purchase a few tea towels there and dry their cups. Next you will be telling me they are using a fresh tea bag for every cup of tea and not simply reusing the old ones or that they go to Waitrose to buy their cakes and sandwiches. Their Duchy Organic Highland All Butter Shortbread are to die for. Bridget C, you would love them.
Give me a break. There are a lot of things you could complain about when it comes to this government. Spending the night in a decent hotel in Oxford for a key international event is not one of them.