Oireachtas credit cards used to pay €1,500 bill at Jamie Oliver restaurant and €17,000 at K Club

A near €1,500 bill at a Jamie Oliver restaurant, a spend of over €17,000 at the K Club, and TV licence payments of €640 were among the items paid for on Oireachtas credit cards over the past year.

There was also a €1,000 bill for a working dinner at a boutique lounge and a near €11,500 bill for accommodation at the Conrad Hotel.

The Oireachtas said it currently has four credit cards in active operation, one for its Finance Unit, one for the Inter-Parliamentary and travel units, and two cards in the names of the clerks of the Irish Parliamentary Association and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly.

The Kildare Hotel & Country Club in Co Kildare.

The Kildare Hotel & Country Club in Co Kildare.

The largest single bill incurred last year was the €17,284 that was spent at the K Club, or the Kildare Hotel and Country as it is listed in statements.

The Oireachtas said this was for a plenary meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in December and included representatives from across Ireland, the UK, and its various island dependencies.

Dining bills

There was a €1,423 charge at Chequer Lane by Jamie Oliver last February when a dinner was hosted in Dublin in honour of a visit by the speaker of the Republic of Moldova.

Another large dining bill was incurred at Agape Café in June 2023 when Leinster House hosted an event at the Kildare restaurant.

The Oireachtas said this €2,298 spend related to an event held in honour of the visit of the President of the House of Representatives of Cyprus.

Also listed in the card statements was an €11,479 charge for accommodation at the four-star Conrad Hotel in Dublin’s city centre last autumn.

It covered accommodation costs for a delegation led by the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Nepal last September.

A four-figure dining bill of just over €1,000 was run up at the boutique Black Door venue on Harcourt Street in Dublin’s south city in July.

That was for a working dinner of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, with attendees from Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Isle of Man.

Other accommodation costs included a €2,200 spend at the luxury Sefton Hotel in Douglas on the Isle of Man last June for a parliamentary event.

The credit cards were used as well for smaller transactions with €55 spent in Wrights of Howth in January 2023, a €26 bill from Tesco, a €320 charge from Marco Pierre White last June, and almost €150 for bus tours in Berlin.

It wasn’t all dining and accommodation either with a €109 charge for an interiors company in Westmeath, various purchases at the Kilkenny Shop including one for €306 last June, an €88 spend at the Guinness Storehouse, and a €1,078 photographic bill from last November.

There were also four separate payments of €160 for TV licence fees late last year even as the number of people paying the charge collapsed in the wake of the RTÉ spending controversy.

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