Government says it followed law on Biden’s watch gift to Micheál Martin
Darragh Mc Donagh
The Department of Foreign Affairs has insisted that it complied with the law in relation to the valuation of a wristwatch given to Micheál Martin by former US president Joe Biden, which allowed him to personally keep the item.
The watch was presented to Martin when he was Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs during a visit to Ireland by former US president Biden in April 2023, along with a pair of sunglasses and a notebook.
Any gift worth more than €650 must be surrendered to the state by a minister under the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995. However, they are allowed to retain gifts with a value under this threshold.
Section 15 of the legislation provides that the value of a gift should be determined by the secretary general to the Government in cases where there is doubt about its monetary worth.
Records released by the Department of Foreign Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act show that there was considerable uncertainty about the value of the watch given to Martin by the US president.
In August 2023, it was noted that “concerted efforts” had been made by the department to establish the monetary worth of the item over a number of months, as “no official value was available”.
However, there is no record of any correspondence with the secretary general to the Government in relation to the matter.
Instead, a determination was eventually made by the minister’s own office that the value of the watch given to Martin by Biden was “significantly less” than €650, permitting him to retain the item.
In October 2024, an official from the protocol section of the department who was dealing with a freedom of information request about the watch emailed a colleague in the Tánaiste’s office, asking whether a value had been attained.
“While we do not have an exact evaluation on the watch, we do believe it is much lower than the threshold,” the colleague replied.
Asked whether the secretary general to the Government had determined the value of the gift in accordance with ethics legislation, a spokesperson for the department said the value of the item had been “determined by the minister’s office to be significantly less than €650”.
“The information note on gifts to office holders published by [SIPO] states that ‘any gift valued at less than €650 can be accepted, unless it violates the provisions of other legislation, including the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Act 2018,” they added.
The spokesperson did not respond when asked whether the department accepted that the value of the watch should have been determined by the secretary general to the Government rather than the minister’s own office under ethics legislation.
A spokesperson for the Department of An Taoiseach said the gift had been dealt with in line with SIPO’s guidance and the Code of Conduct for Office Holders.
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