PUBLIC money totalling almost €36,500 will be spent by Cork County Council on sending delegations to America as part of the annual St Patrick’s Day trip across the Atlantic.
Flights for the trip cost €17,189.40, while hotels will cost €19,216.28.
Cork county mayor Cllr Joe Carroll (FF) will embark on a 13-day trip to Chicago and New York, and will be joined by various other councillors and Council staff for ‘high-level engagements’.
Departing Ireland on Friday, March 7th, Cllr Carroll will attend a dinner and business meeting with the Cork BP&P Association in New York, an event which has traditionally been attended by the mayor in previous years.
From there, he will depart for Chicago where he will be joined by other councilors, including Cllr Deirdre Kelly (FF) for a Plumbers Union reception, the dyeing green of the River Chicago, and a lunch meeting hosted by the Cork branch of the Irish Hotels Federation.
They will be joined by Cllr Michael Hegarty (FG) and Cllr Deirdre O’Brien (FF) as well as Cork County Council chief executive Moira Murrell and three other members of the Council’s executive staff for the Chicago St Patrick’s Day parade on March 15th.
They will then travel to New York for the St Patrick’s Day parade on March 17th, which will be followed by a day of meetings with the IDA, the Consul General, and Tourism Ireland.
Meanwhile, Cllr Mary Linehan Foley (Ind) and Cllr Audrey Buckley (FF) will travel for a five-day visit to Detroit, where they will meet the United Irish Societies, the Gaelic League/Irish American Club, and have a private meet-and-greet at Most Holy Trinity Church on St Patrick’s Day.
The Council says that the St Patrick’s Day engagement offers a ‘unique opportunity to promote Cork county from an economic, tourism and third level educational perspective’.
