CONTROVERSIAL senator Ivor Callely claimed back 5,000 miles in expenses almost every month while serving as a minister, despite living less than three miles from his departmental offices.

During the two years and two months in which he was at the Department of Health, he claimed €87,467.26 in mileage expenses, the equivalent of more than €40,000 a year.

The minister was resident at St Lawrence Road in Clontarf, which was less than three miles from his offices at Hawkins Street and only marginally farther from Leinster House, his other primary place of business.

Throughout his service at the department, Callely almost invariably claimed the maximum available 5,000 miles each month, none of which had to be vouched.

That works out at 166 miles each day, the equivalent of a round trip to Wexford every day of the month, including weekends and public holidays.

In March 2003, Callely was abroad four times on state business but still managed to put in for 5,000 miles, an allowance that at that time was worth more than €3,000 tax-free.

When the senator was first appointed as a junior minister at the Department of Health, he would also have been provided with a civilian driver free of charge and these claims are entirely separate.

There was ample opportunity for claiming mileage within the department and there appears to have been nothing by way of checks to ensure the expenses were legitimate. The expense claims began comparatively slowly: following his official appointment on 19 June 2002, Callely claimed back only 1,000 miles – or €599.80 – for his first 11 days of service.

By July, the senator had quickly ramped up his expenses and put in for 4,000 miles, a claim that was worth €4,456, according to documents obtained from the Department of Health.

In August, Callely claimed for 5,000 miles, the maximum allowable under the system, and was paid €2,999 tax-free, as the mileage rate had been cut across the board by government.

The forms, sent to the Department of Health for payment, were personally filled out by Callely and delivered from his constituency office in Dublin.

In September, Callely went abroad on his first official trip to London and Berlin and altered his mileage claim appropriately. For that month, he claimed 4,000 miles, which was paid in the form of a cheque for €2,399.20.

10,000 miles for two months

It was back to normal in October and November of that year, when Callely claimed for 10,000 miles over the two months, for which he was paid €6,038 on top of his ministerial salary.

The controversial senator made claims every two months and similar expenses were sought for December and January and for February and March.

In March 2003, Callely was abroad at least four times, according to copies of receipts made available to the Sunday Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act.

The month began with a trip to Paris, details of which are scant. The junior minister then travelled to Malta from 11 to 13 March and was barely back in Ireland before he headed to Manchester and Birmingham for another three days.

Receipts released by the Department of Health show that he made another trip that month, to Slovakia, yet Callely still managed to put in a claim in March for the maximum 5,000 miles in expenses.

In April and May, it was business as usual and the junior minister also put in a full claim despite spending seven days in the United States in May.

By June, when the Dáil was winding down, Callely gave the taxpayer some relief with a reduced claim of 4,500 miles that month and for 4,200 miles in July to reflect his curtailed schedule.

The minister did the same in December, reducing his mileage claim slightly to reflect the Christmas wind-down, but in every subsequent month until his departure, he claimed for 5,000 miles.

By the time he moved on from the Department of Health, he had claimed more than €85,000 in mileage, all paid tax-free on top of his six-figure salary.

€123,221 expenses in two years

In all, his 26 months of service at the department provided him with €123,221 in expenses for travel within Ireland and overseas, for official entertainment and the purchase of gifts.

The revelations will heap even more pressure on the beleaguered senator who is already at the centre of two controversies over his expenses. Callely has been suspended from the Seanad because of his inflated travel expenses, claiming mileage from a holiday home in Co Cork rather than his actual home in Dublin.

Two investigations, one by the Seanad and one by Fianna Fáil, are also underway into claims he made for mobile phones using stationery from a firm that had gone out of business.

Callely made numerous trips abroad as a minister, which included one particularly extravagant trip to the United States in May of 2003. A limousine was at his beck and call in Washington DC and in New York at a combined cost of more than €5,000. Callely also travelled there in style: the bill for his flight and that of his private secretary came to €6,357.

Who paid for their accommodation has not been made clear from Department of Health records but the junior minister did put in a substantial claim for subsistence. It included €923 worth of meals and snacks but most of the receipts are unreadable and determining which restaurants were involved has proved impossible.

One of the largest expenses related to car hire, with four days of limousine hire in Washington coming to a total of $3,852, which included $489.94 in a gratuity and another $96 in car phone charges.

A single day's worth of car transport in New York cost a total of $1,155 with a gratuity of $210 paid out as part of the bill. The following day, Callely ran up another bill of $1,009, of which $182 was a tip for the driver.

Fortunately, the Department of Foreign Affairs had a deal in place with the Smith Limousine Company in New York and was able to avail of a 10% discount.

Callely's wife Jennifer accompanied him on two trips abroad as part of the government's annual St Patrick's Day exodus.

In March 2004, the couple travelled to Budapest in Hungary and to Bucharest in Romania in the service of the state.

Their airplane tickets cost a combined €3,700, with a room booked at the Athénée Palace Hilton in Bucharest costing €269 and two nights at the Marriott Hotel in Budapest costing €655.

Other charges also arose on that trip including VIP airport facilities in Hungary costing €100.30 and the same service en route at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam costing €236.81.

There were also car hire bills: €706 for the use of a limousine in Budapest and €179 for the same service in Bucharest.

For St Patrick's Day 2003, the Callely St Patrick's Day junket was rather more prosaic, consisting of a trip to England where the major expense was €2,431 for car hire.

The flights for that trip to Birmingham and Manchester were relatively inexpensive, coming in at just €261.86 each for the couple. Callely made a subsistence claim of €194 while his wife Jennifer put in for €153.

In all, Callely ran up €11,694 in limousine costs, around half of which was run up on trips to England and using the London embassy's preferred firm, Cartel Direct Limousines.

The junior minister also made frequent use of VIP lounges, and costs of up to €437 were paid at airports including Paris, Bratislava, Amsterdam and Budapest.

Also included in the senator's expense claims were seven flights to Cork, all relating to "official business". By coincidence, Callely's controversial €650,000 holiday home at Kilcrohane on the Sheep's Head Peninsula is also in Co Cork.

On one occasion, in July 2004, Callely suffered the indignity of personally having to pay for a flight back to Dublin from Cork and had to claim it back. An email explained there had been a mix-up.

"Minister of state requested return flight to Dublin to return to official duties this week. Flight bookings were made through Personnel and Club travel," it reads.

"However, when he [Callely] arrived in Cork Airport there was no record of booking and minister had to personally pay for (return) flight (see attached invoice) amounting to €194.40. As the minister is returning this evening, he has enquired if refund can be made to him this evening."

Two months earlier, Callely also put in for the cost of the flight back from Cork as he returned to Dublin for "official engagements".

The senator also made more than a dozen claims for dining expenses at the restaurant in Leinster House. These were classified as "entertainment expenses" and totalled around €1,500.

Queries about this kind of spending were raised several times: one note from the department to Callely's private secretary asked if this was not personal expenditure.

"When I got on to joint services for an invoice, they said that this account is the minister's personal account and that invoices aren't issued in such cases," the note said. "You will see that the address on the statement is the minister's home address."

Later correspondence clarifying the expenses said the money involved referred to "delegation meetings in Leinster House and lunch afterwards in the restaurant".

Generous gestures

While the money involved in entertaining in the Houses of the Oireachtas was relatively small, Callely was also capable of more generous gestures.

A function for 25 people hosted by the minister at Fadó restaurant in the Mansion House in November 2003 cost €2,257. That included a food bill of €1,312.50 charged at €52.50 per person and a drinks bill of €739.50. The minister kindly added a €205.20 tip, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Callely kept the drinks tab running for the evening with 50 orders of Gordon's gin, 50 measures of Smirnoff Red, 12 Jamesons, four Bacardis and three Hennessy brandies among the items charged.

Six days later, the minister charged another substantial dining bill to the department – a total of €380 at Wong's Restaurant in Clontarf.

Callely also hosted another dinner at Fadó Restaurant although this time the bill was far smaller, at €978.

The remainder of the minister's expenses related to the purchase of gifts for foreign dignitaries abroad and came to more than €2,000. All of the items were purchased from the Dublin Crystal Glass Company and were presented on official visits to Britain, Malta, Hungary and Romania.

Unlike other ministers, however, Callely was not content to hand over a generic gift on his extensive travels. Instead, he had the items personally engraved with a motif of a harp and an inscription that read: "Presented by Ivor Callely TD, Minister of State, Government of Ireland."