Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Question 312: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the amount spent by his Department in 2004, 2005, 2006 and to date in 2007 for air travel, business class flights and first class flights in tabular readable form. [30629/07]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The table below contains a breakdown of all air travel in the past four years. The significant reduction in the 2007 figures is primarily due to an ongoing effort being made by my Department to achieve better value from air travel.

The table identifies the class of air travel undertaken by staff at Headquarters. In the case of our 75 Missions outside the State, each Mission operates within the confines of a travel budget assigned on an individual Mission basis. In using this budget, Missions must adhere to the travel guidelines set down by my Department, which give strict criteria for instances where economy, business or (significantly less likely) first class travel may be undertaken.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Question 313: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the amount spent by his Department on couriered documents, registered post and standard post to date in 2007 in tabular readable form. [30644/07]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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My Department operates a diplomatic mail service to facilitate secure communication between the State and our Missions abroad. Ireland currently has a network of 75 resident diplomatic and consular Missions abroad and 87 Honorary Consulates. To date in 2007, the operation of Ireland's diplomatic mail service has cost €941,675.

The expenditure, to date in 2007, on postage accrued by my Department is €1,254,582. Over a million Euro of this expenditure was spent by the Passport Office forwarding passports to our citizens. While we do not differentiate in our accounting system between registered and standard postage costs, passports are normally sent to citizens through An Post's "swiftpost", which is a type of registered post service. In regard to courier services, the costs accrued to date in 2007, both at Headquarters and across our Missions, amount to €179,431. For convenience, I am setting out the above in tabular form.