WE have a long history of our politicians hopping on flights to go and sell our corner of the world in another one.
So communities minister Gordon Lyons jetting off to North America on official business is nothing new and had the potential to be a positive act.
But a cloak of mystery screened the trip from the moment he flew out to Washington DC in the immediate aftermath of a wave of criticism for his meeting with the Loyalist Communities Council.
When this newspaper attempted to find out why Mr Lyons was going and what he was doing there, Department for Communities officials initially wouldn’t tell us.
Only after much pressing did they let us know he was going to the American capital, then Toronto in Canada and back to Bethlehem in Pennsylvania for “a series of events, meetings and engagements”.
And now, as our front page reported earlier in the week, we find out the cost of this nine-day trip came in at a whopping £40,000. The price of the flights for the minister and his travelling team of five others came in at more than £21,000 with another £13,000 spent on accommodation and the rest on additional costs.
Mr Lyons, his special adviser and private secretary all flew from Dublin to Washington DC in business class, while three other officials travelled in economy.
Noticeable amongst the breakdown of costs was that Mr Lyons and his SPAD’s business class flights were priced at £5,658 but his private secretary’s cost £2,000 more at £7,448. At best, this can only be considered baffling.
Moreover, some will feel the minister is being somewhat disingenuous when he suggests he was “more than shocked and surprised” when he heard how much the trip had cost.
He insisted he didn’t know the price tag until he was safely back home, saying: “I think we would obviously want to do this an awful lot cheaper.. and I absolutely think that needs to be looked at.”
Noble words that nobody could disagree with but the proof will be in his subsequent actions, not words.
It is worth highlighting that among the minister’s coterie was at least one press officer. Mr Lyons said, when asked on the Nolan Show about our story, that it wasn’t “shrouded in mystery” because “I put out statements about all the events that I was at”.
As is often the case, the devil is in the detail because those statements came on or after October 18 – the day after his final engagement.
The public purse remains under extreme pressure, from different angles, so we need the penny to drop for everyone that we literally can’t afford to waste public money.
