Two FÁS officials cost their organisation more than €10,000 in flights on a single trip to Florida last December to discuss proposals for a programme involving links with NASA.
Figures obtained by The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the State training and employment authority spent €5,145.53 each on flights alone to transport the two officials from Dublin to Florida in the US and back.
The officials spent six days in Florida where they discussed "elements of a proposed science and space programme with NASA".
The programme, which was not finalised during the trip, involves the possibility of setting up trainee placements for Irish citizens in the Kennedy Space Centre.
The total cost to FÁS for the week in Florida, when €3,293.57 in spending or "subsistence" money is included, comes to €13,584.63, more than two-thirds of the organisation's entire foreign travel bill for December.
A spokesman for FÁS said the organisation had a policy of keeping spending on "any overheads", including travel, to a minimum.
"There would be a policy always to get value for money and competitive quotes for any expenditure," he said.
However on December 7th, the two officials flew club class from Dublin to Atlanta, Georgia, and took a connecting economy flight to Florida.
On the return journey on December 13th, they again took an economy internal flight from Florida to New York and then travelled club class back to Dublin.
Links between FÁS and NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, were developed when representatives of NASA attended the FÁS Opportunities Fair at the RDS in Dublin last year.
The total foreign travel bill for FÁS staff in December was €18,139.37.
The second most expensive trip was to a conference in New York to which three officials travelled at a cost of €12,595.89.
However, FÁS was fully reimbursed for this trip.
No money was recovered by FÁS for the Florida excursion. A FÁS spokesman last night was unable to name the two officials who took the trip.
