According to Ryanair there were flights from Derry to London that the minister could have taken.
From Ryanair website.
Ryanair, Ireland’s largest airline, today (6th Aug) called for Minister Dempsey to explain why he wasted some €100,000 of taxpayers’ funds flying the govt jet from Dublin to Derry and then on to London when he could have travelled in his Ministerial Merc to Derry and flown with Ryanair from Derry to London saving Irish taxpayers over €99,950!!
Ryanair questioned why Minister Dempsey wasted €100,000 of taxpayers’ money to attend the McGill Summer School, in order to ‘Analyse the political, economic and administrative systems that have allowed our economy to be brought to its knees”. Perhaps Minister Dempsey now realises that wasting €100,000 on a needless flight from Dublin to Derry to London and back (when his Ministerial Merc and a scheduled Ryanair flight would have done the same job for just €50, a saving of over €99,950) is exactly the kind of Govt waste which brought Ireland to its knees in the first place.