Government forks out for 50 fidget spinners and new flagpoles

Leinster House bought fidget spinners, flagpoles worth more than €10,000 and paid more than €24,000 for top-of-the-range mobile phones for politicians last year.

More than €50,000 was spent on hospitality and entertainment by the Houses of the Oireachtas, which included a lunch hosted by the Ceann Comhairle costing €1,330, a €2,990 canape reception during US president Joe Biden’s visit, and a dinner bill of €1,142 for an Irish American delegation.

A database of expenditure also details €80 for 50 fidget spinners as sensory supports to make Ireland’s parliament more autism-friendly, €72 for flags and whistles for the Pride festival, and an outlay of €1,068 for traditional wallets for presentation.

Almost €7,400 was spent on gifts for visiting dignitaries, including 10 A6 notebooks and pens which had the Dáil Éireann logo and cost the taxpayer more than €500. Books of condolence cost €273, two St Brigid’s scarves were bought for €128 each and an unnamed book was bought as a present at a price of €370.

Pest control for Leinster House and its complex came to just under €45,000, comprising inspections and maintenance of an Exosex system designed to curb moth reproduction by releasing chemicals that trick the insects into trying to mate with their own sex.

There was a substantial bill of €180,000 for furniture and fittings that included a significant outlay for flagpoles, with four transactions listed at a total of just over €10,000.

An Oireachtas spokeswoman said this had covered several dozen wooden flagpoles used for events and in meeting rooms around Leinster House.

Some €1,750 was paid for flags of the United States, Armenia, Italy, Mexico and other countries.

Purchases for staff or politicians included €2,558 for two “ergonomic specialist chairs” and a bill of €1,557 for “three chairs for the taller person”.

The database detailed almost €38,000 in spending on flooring, with more than €13,000 for special Modul’up flooring for the creche area as the existing vinyl “could not be adequately repaired”.

Replacing carpeting between two blocks of the Leinster House complex, which had become “very badly stained”, cost nearly €8,000.

A sum of around €3,600 was spent on paper cups and filtered water while the bill for technical equipment, much of it related to broadcasting, came to almost €69,000.

There was a bill of €24,400 for TDs and senators to buy a new phone every 18 months up to a cost of €750. Of the 39 transactions listed, 19 were for the maximum amount.

There was a small bill of €11,992 for constituency office establishment costs, which generally arise only for new TDs and are always highest in the immediate aftermath of a general election.

The Oireachtas forked out €31,000 in telephone allowances, which can be paid to committee chairpersons and party whips as an additional payment to reflect the extra duties involved in their roles.

Overseas trips, mileage, and domestic travel costs came to over €817,000, which included nearly €13,000 in mileage from the Ceann Comhairle’s office and travel and subsistence costs of around €3,600. There was a sizeable bill of just under €62,000 for taxi travel, some of it on trips abroad, but mostly relating to staff and especially those who work long hours in the evening due to late sittings of the Dáil.

A sum of €10,250 was spent on car hire, almost all of it related to a visit by a delegation from Nepal as part of an Inter-Parliamentary Union trip to Ireland last September.

Incidental costs related to travel came to €5,800, which included €1,901 for a “cycling study tour”, €487 for a visit to a solar farm and €1,382 for another bike study tour for the Joint Committee on the Environment.

Also listed in the spending data was a payment of €4,795 for carbon emissions to offset the footprint of TDs and senators flying abroad.