Jack Chambers enjoyed business class flight and five-star hotel, secretary flew economy and stayed at Hilton

Fianna Fáil public expenditure minister Jack Chambers enjoyed a taxpayer-funded business-class flight and two nights in a five-star Washington, DC hotel to attend the secretive Bilderberg Meeting – while his private secretary flew economy and stayed in a cheaper hotel.

The total cost of the flights and hotels for Chambers and his secretary for the two days came to around €7,600, according to the freedom of information records released to Sinn Féin TD Mairéad Farrell who raised the issue in the Dáil today.

The “future of warfare” and “Trans-Atlantic defence-industrial relationship” were among the topics discussed at last month’s controversial annual gathering, which Chambers attended as an invited participant.

Chambers’s official ministerial diary for the meeting lists an eight-hour block simply as “Bilderberg”.

Attendees this year included arms manufacturer Saab – whose lobbyists have had a "closed door" and “strictly confidential” meeting with Chambers’s department, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and AI company Anthropic, recently embroiled in the US missile strike on an Iranian school.

Chambers's flights to the Bilderberg Meeting, with the return leg in business class, cost €2,933.52, while his private secretary's economy ticket, for the same flights, was just €902.51.

The minister – responsible for controlling government spending – spent the second and third nights of his April trip at Washington’s $760-a-night Salamander Hotel, where the Bilderberg event was held.

Chambers stayed at the Hilton Washington DC National Mall for his first night in the US, costing $520.62. His private secretary Niamh Kavanagh stayed at the same four-star hotel for all three nights of the trip, at a total of $1,636.82.

The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual, invitation-only gathering of the global elite.