Ambassador’s New Delhi rent is €29k – per month!
Embassy splurge continues
RENTING accommodation for our ambassador in New Delhi is costing the Irish taxpayer €29,000-a-month – in a country where hundreds of millions of people live below the poverty line.
The rental agreement was signed for a property in the ‘diplomatic enclave’ of New Delhi, the capital of India, in January 2013, as Ireland remained mired in recession.
The revelation is likely to spark further calls for a review of Ireland’s diplomatic spending after revelations that a luxury apartment for the Irish ambassador in Tokyo was being rented for €46,000-a-month.
The Department of Foreign Affairs justified that expenditure, saying Japan is one of the most expensive countries in the world.
When questions were raised regarding the extraordinary rent being paid in India, they again said rental costs were ‘very high’ in New Delhi.
In a statement that took 10 days to prepare the department confirmed that the monthly rent paid came to €29,409.
Details of payments made in 2015, obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday under FOI, reveal that the annual total last year came to €352,000.
The department said that as well as the ambassador, there were embassy employees living in the property: ‘[It] consists of a house for the head of mission and his family and separate living quarters for embassy staff and dependants.’ The department also referred to the ‘extremely high demand for property in one of the world’s fastest growing economies’.
The property is located in New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave, which is home to dozens of embassies and official residences. With tree-lined boulevards and none of the heavy traffic so familiar in India, the neighbourhood – established in 1950 – is the most affluent in the city.
Houses on Sardar Patel Marg, where the Irish residence is located, are mainly built on large land plots of between 800sq.m and 1,600sq.m.
Ireland’s ambassador to India Brian McElduff’s home is close to the ITC Maurya Hotel, which boasts that it is ‘close to the corridors of power’.
The five-figure monthly rental bill is over 100 times more than the average rent for a one-bed city centre apartment in New Delhi – €29,000 compared to €224.
Meanwhile, in Mr McElduff’s neighbourhood, a 185sq.m two-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms, three balconies, two car parking spaces and a study was available to rent last week for €1,276.54 a month.
If that is too modest for the ambassador’s requirements there is a nearby seven-bedroom property with seven bathrooms, seven balconies, seven car parking spaces, a study, store room and servant quarters, for €10,790 a month – almost a third less than what the taxpayer currently forks out in rent.
With the lease due to expire at the end of the year, diplomatic staff are ‘actively engaged’ with the landlord to seek savings before the rental agreement is renewed. They are also ‘exploring other suitable options available on the market’.
More than €4m was spent last year on homes for our ambassadors and consul generals in countries where a property is not owned by the State.
‘Extremely high demand for property in this area’