Minister for Defence Tony Killeen has contended that the use of Government jets by Ministers is “carefully controlled”.
Mr Killeen was responding to new information which showed that the jets were being diverted to drop Ministers at the airport closest to their homes.
He said the jets were often used for detours when meetings ran late or when Ministers’ schedules were tight.
Mr Killeen told RTÉ radio that dropping a Minister off at the nearest airport is “easily done” but conceded it came at “considerable cost”.
Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Gulfstream landed in Cork eight times in 2010 to facilitate the Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin and on a further occasion to drop off the Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe.
Mr Killeen said Ministers were making much more use of commercial flights to meet their commitments abroad and turning less and less to the Government jets. He said the jets were used 126 times in 2009, compared to 266 times in 2005.
“So there’s been a halving of the number of uses of the jets so people at Government level are doing their best to use commercial flights where possible," he said. "But there are lots of instances where that is not possible."
He cited European Council meetings in Brussels or Luxembourg, which could continue until very late, long after the last scheduled flight had departed. “It’s impossible to know what time a meeting will end. Sometimes they go through the night as I discovered on a few occasions and they generally run later than departure times for commercial flights,” he said.