Doubling up of dubious expense claims are among the examples of questionable behaviour by local councillors depicted by an RTÉ Investigates programme broadcast last night.The investigation, titled Claims, Planes, and Automobiles, follows an intensive series of Freedom of Information requests by the programmes makers, cross-referenced with expense claims lodged by councillors with bodies external to the local authority in question.The investigation shows that there is little policing of what is a disjointed expense claims system leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab, RTÉ said.
One retired councillor, Fianna Fáils Jerry Lundy, who sat on Sligo County Council for 15 years, was found to, on at least five occasions, have claimed expenses to events in Ireland while at the same time having officially attended European committee of the regions events in other EU countries such as Spain and Belgium.
In 2015, Mr Lundy told Sligo County Council that he left home in Sligo at 3pm on a Thursday for a training event in Monaghan. 
However, the committee of the regions, of which Mr Lundy was a member, confirmed that he had attended a seminar in the Netherlands on the same date for which he received expenses.
Overlapping events
Meanwhile, Fine Gaels Mary Howard, a councillor in Co Clare since 2014, made expense claims for multiple overlapping events, including travelling from Ennis to Bantry for a two-day seminar in Cork, only to travel to Limerick the next morning to conduct interviews on behalf of the Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board.
In a statement to RTÉ Investigates, Ms Howard said that she had forgotten that she was needed to conduct interviews for the training board, and said: I enjoy driving, thus journeying to and from these locations is not a chore for me.
Responding to the investigation Aodh Quinlivan, director of the centre for local and regional governance at University College Cork, said: It is probably indefensible at this stage, that you wouldnt have a system that is based on vouched expenses.
Separately, on RTÉ.ie, the RTÉ Investigates team also reported that former Mayor of Cork County, Fianna Fáil councillor Patrick Gerard Murphy, attended a seminar involving 289 other councillors from all local authorities in Gormanston, Co Meath, in April 2017.
Mr Murphy told Cork County Council that he had left his home on the Thursday afternoon of the conference at 1pm and subsequently claimed travel expenses for a 736km round trip worth 630.
However, at the same time, Mr Murphy submitted an expense claim to Cork Education and Training Board asserting that on the same Thursday he had travelled to the AGM of IPB Insurance, a round trip of 668km, for which he claimed 558 in travel expenses and an overnight rate of 133.73 for his stay.
Mr Murphy, in a statement to RTÉ, said he regretted “administrative errors and oversights in his claims” and that he had reimbursed the overpayments to both Cork County Council and the Cork Education and Training Board.
The RTÉ Investigates probe revealed that hundreds of councillors had failed to abide by the law in the shape of the Local Government Act by not declaring expenses they had received from external organisations.