Jackie Healy-Rae: claimed for three trips per week

INDEPENDENT Kerry South TD Jackie Healy-Rae claimed €41,582 in travel and subsistence expenses in the first six months of this year alone.


Details of Healy-Rae's expenses released to theSunday Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act have also shown that the outspoken critic of former Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue's lavish expenses is among the TDs who claim for three one-way trips between his constituency and the Dáil each week.


Due to a loophole in the generous Leinster House expenses regime, members of the Oireachtas living more than 272km from the Dáil can legally claim expenses for a maximum of three one-way journeys in a given week.


An analysis of Healy-Rae's travel and subsistence expense claim forms for the end of 2008 and the first six months of 2009 has found that he has been claiming for three one-way trips most weeks.


For example, in the period 2 November 2008 to 20 December 2008 Healy-Rae claimed for 21 one-way journeys between Kerry and Dublin. The Dáil was in session on each of those seven weeks.


A spokesman for the Houses of the Oireachtas told the Sunday Tribune that TDs and senators can only claim for journeys that they have made and the maximum a TD from a constituency such as South Kerry can claim is three one-way journeys.


In a response to a query about claiming for 21 one-way journeys in a seven-week period, Healy-Rae said: "The expenses are based on the distance from the constit­uency to Leinster House. As I live in south Kerry it is calculated as 'three one-way journeys per week'. Therefore in the seven-week period you are enquiring about I would have claimed for 21 one-way journeys.


"This is the criteria set by the Houses of the Oireachtas for claiming expenses and it is the only form that I am aware of. Over the many years that I have represented the people of south and west Kerry I have often had to return to funerals or constituency meetings and come back to Dublin to attend to my parliamentary duties."


Since the 2007 general election, Healy-Rae has received €188,451 in expenses. He got €32,806 in taxed allowances for committee work and €155,645 in untaxed all­owances and expenses.