The Housing Agency spent more than €7,000 on hotel accommodation for three members of staff to stay three nights in the French Riviera during a major property conference.
The agency paid €5,157 for its chief executive Martin Whelan and another senior official to stay at a hotel in the centre of Cannes in March.
The bill covered three nights of accommodation for two rooms at an average nightly cost of almost €860 per room, according to records released under Freedom of Information.
The two senior officials stayed at the four-star Hotel Verlaine, located in a restored nineteenth-century residence in the city.
Its website describes the hotel as “just moments from La Croisette, where your stay unfolds to the sunlit rhythm of the South.”
A third person from the Housing Agency also travelled to attend the MIPIM conference in the south of France. Their room was booked at the Little Palace Hotel with the bill for three nights coming to €1,856, the records showed.
Costs on the trip came to just over €14,000 which included rental of a room for a Housing Agency meeting at the Marriott Hotel for €1,200.
Badges for the three officials to attend the conference cost €4,518 while airfares for the attendees came to just €816.
There were other costs including €191 for airport transfers and other small bills for miscellaneous items.
The Housing Agency was one of several public bodies in Ireland to participate in the event in France.
In April, it was reported that Dublin City Council had spent €11,400 on accommodation at the Royal Antibes hotel in Cannes with a room rate of around €592 per night.
Asked about the trip, a Housing Agency spokesperson said that Ireland’s presence at the conference was “an important strategic opportunity” at a time when the country faces a critical need to accelerate housing and infrastructure delivery.
“The scale of investment required to support this delivery cannot be met through public expenditure alone and Ireland needs to compete in attracting global capital,” they said.
“MIPIM provided a platform to highlight key Government initiatives designed to improve development viability and activate housing supply, including the Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme which is managed and administered by The Housing Agency,” they added.
Reporting by Ken Foxe
