THE Progressive Democrats have expressed disquiet over reports that the Minister of State for Sport, Mr Bernard Allen, travelled with his wife and three children to Atlanta at the expense of the Olympic Council of Ireland and Delta Airlines last year.
The party's spokeswoman on education, Ms Helen Keogh, said yesterday she found the reports disturbing" because the Minister had been presented with a potential conflict of interest.
Mr Allen and his family, as well as his secretary, Mr Austin Mall on and his wife, went to Atlanta, Georgia last Easter on an expenses paid trip. The Minister was involved in fund raising activities for the Olympic Council in the city that hosts the Games this summer. He and his family then had a brief holiday which they paid for themselves.
Ms Keogh said the Minister had political responsibility for the Olympic Council. Last year it received a grant of £1,085,000 from his Department while this year's allocation was about £800,000.
"Ministers must avoid conflicts of interest and must be seen by the public to do so. I am not disputing that the Minister's trip was legitimate business but it should have been funded in the usual way," she added.
Meanwhile, Mr David Balbirnie said the OCI executive, of which he is a member, had not approved the travel expenses for the Allen children. The president of the Council, Mr Pat Hickey, had told The Irish Times that children's airline tickets were bought by the OCI at a discount rate.
"I think that members of the OCI executive would have questioned the high level of expenditure that this travel would have entailed. The OCI was spending taxpayers' money but it was not authorised by the executive," Mr Balbirnie said.
He had "no problem" about a sports minister travelling to support sport and assisting in fund raising. However, it was "not correct for the OCI to have to pay for the additional cost of taking his family out of Government funding that we receive every year".
It would be a "good idea" if the Comptroller and Auditor General were to conduct an audit of OCI expenditure, since 50 per cent of the council's gross receipts comes from the Exchequer, he added.