Thread: Ministers, TDs, and Senators billed the taxpayer €1.3 million last year in the little-known special secretarial allowance. It allows for payments for PR advice, secretarial assistance, and IT. Three months of invoices have been made available under FOI: 
Minister Simon Coveney billed €29,520 for PR advice from Springboard PR & Marketing. The maximum allowable claim under this allowance in a year is €41,902. This is one of three invoices:
Minister Helen McEntee billed €5,899 in "secretarial assistance" from Consilium Communications. Here's one of the invoices:
Minister of State Pat Breen submitted invoices totalling €5,035 for PR advice. This is one of three invoices that were paid in November and December of last year:
Junior Minister Catherine Byrne submitted an invoice for €4,305 from the Léargas Úr consultancy. This is a copy of the bill - it was paid on 23 December:
Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins used his allowance to pay for IT support & training for his staff. This invoice for €4,000 was submitted in early December last year:
Minister Patrick O'Donovan submitted an invoice for €1,094 for PR advice. This was for services carried out by the firm Galocon Media:
Education Minister Joe McHugh submitted invoices totalling €10,200 in the last three months of the year. This was for "secretarial assistance". This is one of the invoices:
Employment Affairs Minister Regina Doherty spent €7,380 on public relations & media monitoring from the firm Performance Matters. I previously tried to access correspondence between the minister & this firm but the request was refused:
Ministers (and some TDs & Senators) also use the scheme to pay for "temporary vouched employees". This is usually for secretarial or parliamentary assistants. This is a record of three months of payments made in that way from Oct to Dec (employee names removed by me)
Records obtained via @RightToKnowIE and published in the interests of transparency.
