John Bruton got permission to swim at local hotel on Delhi holiday

Former minister for industry and commerce John Bruton got permission to swim at a hotel in Delhi while staying in the ambassador's residence on a private holiday, documents included in the State papers show.

Plans for a visit to Singapore in the following year were not so well-received and one official was seeking "a hole to crawl into" to avoid lunch.

A 1985 file from the Department of Foreign Affairs shows that EJ Carroll, the chargé d'affaires at the Irish Embassy in India, wrote to the assistant manager of the Oberoi Intercontinental, Delhi, in July 1983.

Carroll referred to a phone call from the Embassy to the hotel “regarding the possibility of the use of the swimming pool at your hotel” by the minister and his wife in July.

"The minister will be on a private visit to Delhi and he will be staying at the residence of the ambassador," he said. "I am grateful for the consideration you have shown by extending complimentary invitation to the minister and his wife to use the swimming pool." The visit to Delhi was part of a three-day stopover after an official visit to Japan, according to a telex in the same file sent from "HQ" to the embassy.

It said ambassador Bernard McHugh, who would be on a private visit home, had offered Bruton the use of the residence and the official car.

“Ambassador has suggested that the air-conditioning be turned on in advance and that whatever household staff are absent might be recalled,” it said.

There was some confusion in the files the following year, however, when documents suggest there was another planned visit to India and East Asia by Bruton in May.

In a letter on April 17th to McHugh, Fergus Healy, vice-consul at the Consulate General of Ireland in Singapore, said "my own face is not smiling just now, in fact I'm hopping mad".

He said the first intimation he had of a visit by Bruton came via a lunch invitation from a Singaporean businessman. This was “really just too much”. He said protocol had called foreign affairs and wanted to know “if there was some sort of hoax”.

A hole to crawl into

He said he himself would be in east

Malaysia

, one of his colleagues would be away in

Europe

, while another “is looking for a hole to crawl into so that he won’t have to go to the luncheon”.

A follow-up telex from Healy, dated April 24th, said he’d been informed that the minister’s visit had been “indefinitely postponed due to unforeseen circumstances”.