The chief executive of the Stormont assembly is on her second all-expenses-paid trip ‘Down Under’ inside a three-month period.
Lesley Hogg is currently in New Zealand for what is described as a “professional development” conference. It is her third such overseas trip within the past 12 months and her fifth long-haul destination on Assembly business in the past three years.
A spokesperson for the Assembly said such trips were “entirely normal” but one MLA has described it as a “questionable use of public funds”.
Last month, The Irish News revealed that Ms Hogg, who is paid a salary of £166,000, travelled to Sydney, Australia in November and the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena six months earlier.
In 2022, she travelled to a conference in Canada, spending a total of 13 nights, before returning the following year for a six-night stay.
In the past three years, the assembly chief executive’s travel costs have amounted to more than £18,000.
Her current eight-day trip to Wellington in New Zealand, which began last Saturday, involves the Stormont boss’s attendance at a “professional development seminar” organised by the Australia and New Zealand Association of Clerks-at-the-Table.
The event brings together parliamentarians from legislatures that include Britain, Canada, Fiji, and Tonga.
Last week, the assembly published a report commissioned by Ms Hogg in which she pledged to implement new measures aimed at tightening the rules around MLAs’ use of public funds.
A spokesperson for the Assembly said overseas trip were “entirely normal” for senior staff of parliamentary institutions, as it gave them an opportunity to “engage with their counterparts in other places on common challenges, parliamentary procedure and other issues”.
“In this context, senior assembly officials ensure that the Northern Ireland Assembly plays its part in developing and strengthening its parliamentary procedures and culture, as well as contributing to the exchange of knowledge and the adoption of best practice,” the spokesperson said.
“This necessarily involves travel to parliamentary conferences and meetings, ensuring the full representation of the Northern Ireland Assembly to partake in discussions and to learn from the diverse experiences of other parliaments.”
The spokesperson said such engagement was “all the more important” because of the absence of devolution for five of the past eight years.
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll said: “Earlier this month, Lesley Hogg said she intends to implement new measures to tighten governance around the use of public funds. Repeated and unjustified spend on international travel expenses is, at best, a questionable use of public funds.
“Thousands of workers across the public sector have been offered below-inflation pay deals in recent months - they’ll wonder how the Stormont coffers never seem to run dry when it comes to overseas travel for highly paid assembly staff.”
