Mayo Cathaoirleach refutes suggestion overseas trips are junkets

The Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council has challenged critics of overseas trips by councillors to experience one for themselves to see if it doesn't offer value for money.

Bonniconlon-based councillor John O'Hara made the comments at the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council where he hit back at criticism of overseas trips made by councillors on behalf of the local authority.

Earlier in the meeting Aontú councillor Paul Lawless noted that the council were looking to approve foreign travel to Slovenia, the Netherlands and the US and called for a review of all the 'waste' in the spending by the local authority.

A number of councillors, including Cllr O'Hara took exception to overseas travel being described as 'waste' and stressed they were important to strengthening links with the Irish Diaspora and other countries.

Cllr O'Hara, who is the Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council recently travelled as part of a council delegation to Milwaukee in the US for the city's Irish festival and told Cllr Lawless that the trip was far from a junket.

“I am going to ask you next year to go out there and stand for four days and meet and greet and see how much of a junket it is. It was no junket for me and I needed three days' rest after it because I was tired,” the Fine Gael councillor said.

“You need to go out there and see the people who put an Irish festival together with 17 bandstands and they do it for the whole week. The amount of work the Irish abroad put into this. There were 34 [representatives] from Co Clare and half as many from Galway and all around the country and they were all there selling their county. We were limited in comparison with manpower and everyone was busy and when you finish in the evening you are fit for bed.

“It is no junket and the only way you will find out what a junket is is to go out for yourself and I suggest next year that you take the mantle. It is time you faced reality. You are a new councillor and I wish you the best but you don't know everything on the first day no matter who you are,” he told the newly elected Knock-based councillor.

Fianna Fáil councillor Damien Ryan also spoke in praise of the importance of going on overseas trips to attract investment into the county. This was echoed by Independent councillor Richard Finn who said that people who travel to these events which are hosted by Irish emigrants are treated like celebrities.

“As long as I have been a member of this council we have travelled and visited different countries. We go to New York once a year and we don't realise how much work our Irish people put into organising those events and the millions of euro it costs to stage those events. They organise for a full year in advance to have people from here to go over there and treat them as celebrities. People who go there make a good impression and they bring tourism back to Co Mayo.

“I would hate to see us isolating ourselves and not seen to be moving out in the world. We could isolate and stay here for the rest of our lives. I don't have to go anywhere but we won't get far. I don't see anybody who doesn't travel and see what is going on in the rest of the world getting too far in this world,” he said.