Ireland Paid Trump Resort €100,000 to Host Police Protecting Him

By Ben Quinn, Guardian UK

30 September 19

Ethics campaigners raise concerns over bill for US president’s visit in June

onald Trump’s resort on the west coast of Ireland was paid €100,000 (£89,000) by the Irish state to provide food to police officers protecting the US president during a two-night visit this year, it has emerged.

The Trump-owned hotel and golf course at Doonbeg received the largest slice of a bill for accommodation and food that came to more than €900,000. The expenditure covered police deployed across County Clare in June.

Trump’s visit to Doonbeg was his first since he was elected president in 2016 and involved about 3,820 members of the Irish police service, the Garda Síochána, working overtime at a cost of €7.49m.

The Trump Organization bought the resort, which has fairways designed by the Australian golfer Greg Norman, in 2014. It has spent €40m, including the purchase price, on expanding and upgrading facilities that include a spa, restaurants and cottages. Trump has visited six times, calling the resort “terrific” and “incredible”.

His June visit followed a trip to the UK. The president bypassed Dublin by landing at nearby Shannon airport, then flew by helicopter to Doonbeg, where he was kept away from protesters by a major security operation that included Irish troops. Nevertheless, some locals believe the US president provides the region with an economic lifeline. 

The payments to Doonbeg, which emerged following a freedom of information request, have been noted in the US by ethics campaigners who are already seeking to hold the president to account over concerns that he is profiting from the presidency.

“When Trump insisted on going way out of his way to stay at his luxury golf resort in Ireland in June, the Irish government ended up paying his business, which he still profits from, more than €113,000,” tweeted Robert Maguire of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Earlier this month Trump dismissed suggestions of impropriety over his vice-president’s stay at Doonbeg and the US military’s use of an airport near his Turnberry golf course in Scotland.

The US president tweeted that he had “nothing to do” with Mike Pence’s stay and “knew nothing” about the official use of the airport near his course.

A US congressional committee has been investigating whether increasing expenditure at the airport and allegations of US military personnel being offered discount deals at Trump’s Ayrshire golf resort represent a violation of the US constitution.

Trump’s stays at his own properties – the most high profile of which has been Mar-a-Lago in Florida, as well as government and diplomatic use of his hotel in Washington, have increasingly raised eyebrows.

During the G7 summit in Biarritz in August the US president also suggested that the 2020 summit should be held at his golf resort in Doral, Florida.