UPDATE (10:50 p.m. EDT Tuesday): In the face of intense public scrutiny, Vice President Mike Pence has defended his decision to stay at an Irish golf resort owned by President Donald Trump on the dime of U.S. taxpayers.

Pence, who’d been criticized for choosing to stay at the Trump resort in Doonbeg on Monday despite its distance from his official meetings in the Irish capital of Dublin, said in a statement that he’d chosen to stay at the luxury property because it’s located near his “ancestral hometown.”

“The Vice President’s family previously stayed at the same resort in 2013 prior to the Trump organization’s acquisition of the property and the office was aware of its proximity to the ancestral home where his great grandmother lived before emigrating to the United States,” Pence’s office said in a statement to The New York Times.

Staying in Doonbeg allowed for the accommodation of “official business and public events on both coasts,” the statement added, noting that Pence had chosen to stay at the resort on his own volition — and not at Trump’s prompting.

The vice president said earlier on Tuesday that it was “logical” for him to stay at the Doonbeg resort, adding that it was “deeply humbling for me to be able to come back to Ireland and have the opportunity to go to the very home town of my mother’s grandmother.”