Noel Dorr was awarded an honorary doctorate at University College Galway yesterday in recognition of his distinguished career in the Irish foreign service.
He has been ambassador to the United Nations and London and head of the Department of Foreign Affairs. He retired in 1995, but since then has returned first to be the Irish negotiator of the Treaty of Amsterdam and then to be the Irish negotiator of the Nice Treaty, for which, in a reserved way, he campaigned. He was also one of the chief negotiators of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
He has served under 11 Ministers: Frank Aiken, Patrick Hillery, Brian Lenihan, Garret FitzGerald, Michael O'Kennedy, John Kelly, Jim Dooge, Gerry Collins, Peter Barry, David Andrews and Dick Spring. He has retired now for the third time.
Noel Dorr is infuriatingly discreet. At one stage during the interview, when we were talking about Gerry Collins (he of "Albert, don't burst the party" fame) he said he would go off the record about Collins later on. When he did so it was to say he liked Gerry Collins, who was a hard worker.
His wife, Caitriona Doran, is different. She wandered in and out of the interview, urging Noel to sock it to them, but he didn't. She waded in herself at the end with fairly forthright views on several characters they had come in contact with. Noel found her observations funny, but even then wouldn't commit himself.
He was a scholarship boy and it still shows. He is very clever. He is very careful with how he expresses himself, although he does so fluently, but it is all so disappointingly measured.
He says he might write his memoirs. If he does, they will be worthy. If he follows his wife's exhortations and socks it to them, they will be riveting.
He was born in 1933 and grew up in Foxford, County Mayo. He went to St Nathy's College in Ballaghadereen and then to UCG on a scholarship, where he earned a BA, B.Comm and H.Dip but had no clear idea of what he wanted to do.
He taught for a year in Thurles CBS and then drifted to the Civil Service in 1957. He came second in the entrance examinations and was assigned to the Revenue Commissioners. In 1960 he did the examination for the Department of Foreign Affairs and joined the Department later that year. He first went to the United Nations section at Iveagh House and worked under Conor Cruise O'Brien, who was then counsellor of the section. In 1961 he was sent to the United Nations General Assembly to be part of the delegation there. In 1962 he was sent to Brussels, where there was an embassy which represented Ireland in Belgium and the European Economic Community.
In 1964 he went to Washington as First Secretary and was there until 1970. During four of those years in Washington he was sent up to the UN General Assembly to be part of the Irish delegation when the General Assembly was in session. While in Washington he did a masters in philosophy at Georgetown University. He returned to Dublin in 1970 to the press section dealing with foreign journalists and became head of the press section. He attended the Sunningdale Conference in 1973.
In 1974 he was appointed to the Political Division as political director and was involved in the preparations for the first Irish presidency of the EEC in 1975. He chaired the political committee in 1979 when Ireland again held the presidency.
In 1980 he was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations and was involved in Ireland's successful campaign to become a member of the Security Council and represented Ireland on the Security Council from January 1st, 1981, to the end of 1982.
In the summer of 1983 he was appointed Ambassador to London and was there until March 1987, and was very much involved in the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, along with Dermot Nally of the Department of the Taoiseach and Sean Donlon and Michael Lewis of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
In March 1987 he came home as Secretary of the Department and remained there until June of 1995, when he retired. It was shortly after his retirement that he was invited to become the personal representative of the Minister for Foreign Affairs for the negotiation of the Amsterdam Treaty. He was chairman of the group that formulated the first draft of the Amsterdam Treaty when Ireland held the EU presidency in 1996. Shortly after the treaty was signed in June 1997, he retired for a second time.
In February 2000 he was again asked to return for the negotiation of the Nice Treaty and remained involved right through until the Treaty was signed in December of last year. He then retired for the third time.
The interview was conducted at his home in Clonskeagh early this week. Apart from his wife, their two white dogs were present and they too intervened in the discussion occasionally.
He met his wife when he was Ambassador to the United Nations. She is sister-in-law of Muiris Mac Conghail, former head of television at RTE and a former government press secretary and it was through Mac Conghail that they met. They married when he was 50.
