A city council spent almost €600 per night per person on accommodation at a luxury hotel with its own private beach on the French Riviera.
Dublin City Council ran up a hotel bill of nearly €11,400 at the four-star Royal Antibes on an official trip by officials and councillors in March.
Five of the delegation enjoyed a three-night stay in an apartment with a sea view terrace at a combined cost of more than €8,800 – the equivalent of €592 per person per night.
A sixth person on the delegation stayed an extra night and their bill came to €2,502, or more than €625 for each evening of the stay.
The trip to Antibes was one of more than a dozen undertaken by staff and elected representatives from Dublin City Council in March, according to records released under FOI.
This included visits to Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Rome, and the west coast of the United States.
On a four-night visit to San José in California for five staff and councillors, accommodation bills came to almost €11,000.
One member of the group did not travel and a refund of €1,775 was subsequently issued to the city council.
The cost per night per room at the four-star Westin in the heart of San Jose came to around €460, the records showed.
Business class flights to California were also booked for Lord Mayor Ray McAdam and the council’s chief executive Richard Shakespeare.
Mr McAdam’s flight cost almost €5,900 while Mr Shakespeare’s travel cost €4,185.
The remaining members of the party travelled in economy class, with the cost of their tickets coming to around €1,000 each.
The Dublin City Council boss Richard Shakespeare was also part of the delegation that visited the French Riviera a couple of weeks earlier.
There were other costly accommodation bills with a deluxe room for one official at the Hotel de l’Abbaye in Paris costing €553.45 for a single night.
A copy of the invoice said the booking was made "outside travel policy" and justified because of its location in the French capital, with its notoriously expensive accommodation.
Lodgings for two people at the four-star nhow Amsterdam RAI hotel cost more than €4,000. The average per night cost of the room on the trip in March worked out at around €500 per person.
There was a separate bill of €2,011 from the same hotel for another employee for their four-night stay.
In late-March, one official travelled to London for an event where they stayed for two nights at the Intercontinental.
The hotel bill for the trip – covering 22-24 March – came to €1,150, or €575 per night of accommodation.
There was also a large bill of €6,334 run up at the Glenavon Hotel in Cookstown, Tyrone, for an official trip by eight staff members.
That covered the cost of bed and breakfast from 8-13 March, an invoice said.
Asked about the expenditure, Dublin City Council said they used official travel to share experiences and learn from other cities on challenges they faced and how they succeeded in dealing with them.
A spokesperson said: "Through travel and collaboration, staff, and management gain exposure to international good practice across a range of services, leading to better city outcomes.
"The City Council uses the expertise of a contracted travel service and endeavours to book accommodation at mid-range prices and within good proximity to the location of the purpose of the business trip."
