The woman who runs the Assembly has travelled to Australia and Canada among 14 trips in the last three years.
The Assembly chief executive Lesley Hogg, who is paid £166,000 a year, has generated travel expenses of £18,563 going to conferences and other business engagements.
This included a six night trip to Sydney, Australia, for a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in November which left the Assembly with a bill for £7,482.
In May she travelled for eight nights to the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena for another Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference at a cost of £1,345.
In all, the assembly chief executive has spent 43 nights away on business in the past three years.
This includes four trips where she was away from Northern Ireland for longer than a working week, including one of 13 days.
Closer to home, Ms Hogg attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth in September 2022 and last year’s coronation of King Charles.
Her longest trip took was to Canada in 2002 for a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia and an Association of the Clerks-at-the-Table conference at Prince Edward Island.
According to data provided by the Assembly Commission under freedom of information, the duration of its chief executive’s Canadian visit was 13 nights, for which the final bill was £3,500.
Two overnight trips - a North South Parliamentary Association and Speakers of the Isles conference - did not incur any expenses, according to the FOI response.
Last year, Ms Hogg spent six nights At Yokon, also in Canada, at the Clerks-at-the-Table professional development seminar, which cost £2,844.
In January 2024, the assembly chief executive received an 11.8% pay rise, taking her annual salary to £166,400.
Ms Hogg joined the assembly in June 2016 having previously worked at the Agrifood and Biosciences Institute in Belfast.
She is a former director of strategic and regulatory affairs for AES, former owner of the Ballylumford and Kilroot power stations.
The same freedom of information response revealed that the assembly’s Director of Parliamentary Services Gareth McGrath attended the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s clerks-at-the-table professional development seminar in Sydney in 2024. The six-night trip cost £2,844.
Last week, MLAs voted in support of a 10% increase in the Stormont assembly’s running cost and higher pay for themselves.
The budget for the regional legislature will increase from April by £5.7m to £64.2m.
People Before Profit’s Gerry Carroll, who was the sole opponent of last week’s motion, criticised the sums spent on senior assembly staff’s overseas travel.
“At a time when ordinary people are struggling to pay their own bills, the Assembly Commission shouldn’t be forking out large sums of money on overseas travel,” the West Belfast MLA said.
“Workers who are being balloted and preparing for industrial action for fair pay, over money owed to them by Stormont, will be left scratching their heads over this eye watering sum and asking whether these journeys and costs are necessary.”
Mr Carroll said the Assembly Commission, Stormont’s governing body, had “serious questions to answer over the nature of this extortionate spend”.
An Assembly Spokesperson said: “It is entirely normal in parliamentary institutions, given the specific and important nature of their roles, for the Speakers/ presiding officers, Members and officials 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.
“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.
“This is all the more important given that the Assembly is now sitting and was underrepresented in these opportunities for many years. For this reason, the Assembly Commission has agreed that a key objective in its Corporate Strategy 2023-2028 is to develop an inter-parliamentary and international strategy to support the work of the Northern Ireland Assembly.”
