€12,000 spent on Michelle Muscat’s flight tickets

Flight tickets for the Prime Minister’s wife Michelle Muscat, accompanying him on six official visits between March 2013 and October 2014, have cost a total of €12,099. This was revealed by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Wednesday in response to a parliamentary question by Opposition MP Marthese Portelli.

It cost her €3,867 in flight tickets to accompany Muscat on an official visit to China, €3,699 to accompany him to the 2014 UN General Assembly and on a visit to the Maltese community in San Francisco, and €3,050 to accompany him to the 2013 UN General Assembly and on a visit to the Maltese community in Toronto.

Elsewhere, it cost her €259 in flight tickets to accompany the Prime Minister to Pope Francis’s inauguration, another €624 to accompany him to an audience with the Pope, and €600 to accompany him on an official visit to Israel and Palestine.

“In all these occasions, the foreign organisations had officially invited my wife to accompany me,” Joseph Muscat said. “Our children accompanied us on five on these trips, but we paid for all of their costs personally.”