THE former Green Party leader’s department paid over €420,000 for 1,514 flights last year.
And as Minister, Eamon Ryan himself travelled on 106 planes to places such as Zurich, New York, Budapest, Istanbul and Baku in 2024.
In total, over the term of the last Government, the department in charge of fighting climate change spent nearly €1 million on almost 4,000 flights.
This was despite Covid-19 travel restrictions in 2020 and 2021.
In 2020, the department booked just 201 flights to places across the globe.
Travel restrictions continued to limit flights in 2021 when the department paid €26,027 for 182 flights.
When the world began to open up again in 2022, some €201,854 was spent on 825 flights.
The spend took off in 2023 when €345,777 was dished out on plane tickets by the Department.
It ramped up even further in Ryan’s final year as Minister for Climate in 2024, when €422,076 was paid for 1,514 journeys.
A spokesperson told The Irish Sun: “Since 2020, the department has seen a significant increase in terms of scope and staff numbers. Staff numbers increased from approximately 400 to more than 800 at the end of 2024 and as a result additional business travel has been necessary in order to carry out the department’s work.”
During his time as Minister, Ryan took 207 flights paid for by the Department of Climate.
The majority of these flights were for EU meetings in Brussels with other trips to Washington, Paris, Dubai and others.
Last year, the former Minister represented Ireland at COP29 talks in Baku where world leaders met to discuss a path to tackling climate change.
It comes as the current Government prepares to send a bumper number of Ministers away for the St Patrick’s Day diplomacy blitz.
Reports suggest that the Coalition is considering sending more Ministers than ever to the United States in order to “love bomb” the new Trump administration amid concerns about how the US President’s policies may impact Ireland.
Oisin Coghlan from Friends of the Earth Ireland told the Irish Sun it is important that Ireland’s Ministers be in the room at meetings in the EU or globally when big decisions are made despite the carbon emissions from flights.
He said: “Depending on what the meetings are – I would want the Ministers and the civil servants to be at the meetings big decisions and policies are being made in Europe or indeed globally.”
