DONEGAL politicians used the Dáil printer to produce almost 300,000 items such as newsletters, posters, greeting and sympathy cards at a cost of over €8,400 since its introduction.
The Oireachtas print facility hit the headlines late last year when it emerged that the printer cost a total of €2 million and did not fit in the building leading to the ceilings in Leinster House having to be raised to accommodate it.
Figures provided to the Donegal News through a Freedom of Information request show that 277,570 items were produced by Donegal members of the Oireachtas using 222,925 sheets of paper since the facility was introduced in 2018.
The most frequent user of the printer was Senator Pádraig Mac Lochlainn who produced 132,340 items at a cost of €3,695.
The Sinn Féin politician used the printer mainly for printing newsletters, 104,800 of them costing over €3,000. He also produced 20,000 cards, 6,000 letterheads, 1,000 compliment slips along with posters and business cards.
His party colleague Pearse Doherty used the printer to produce 40,480 items at a cost of €1,234.17. This included 25,050 newsletters, 7,520 posters and flyers, 4,000 compliment slips, 3,000 letterheads as well as greeting and sympathy cards (400) and booklets (410).
Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue used the printer to produce 35,300 items at a cost of €822.89.
The Inishowen politician produced almost 20,000 sheets of Oireachtas headed paper, 13,500 newsletters, 1,250 business cards and 750 booklets and documents.
Fine Gael’s Joe McHugh printed 25,450 items at a cost of €1,204.44 since the introduction of the equipment. This was mainly to produce Oireachtas headed paper (12,400 items), followed by cards (5,050), newsletters (5,000), booklets (2,000) and compliment slips and business cards (1,000).
Independent Thomas Pringle used the machine to produce 24,850 items at a cost of €834.57. He mainly used the facility to produce letterheads (18,500) followed by newsletters (5,600), compliment slips (500) and policy documents for his constituents (250).
Meanwhile Pat the Cope Gallagher produced the least amount of items, 19,150 at a cost of €685.87. The Fianna Fail politician used the machine to make 3,500 calendars, 4,300 sheets of Oireachtas headed paper, 3,600 letterheads, 3,000 compliment slips 2,000 business cards and posters and 750 greeting cards.
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