The announcement that we will soon have our second embassy in Latin America - in Mexico - has led to talk of opening more, what with the Celtic Tiger, expanding markets, etc, etc. A meeting last month of the Committee of Public Accounts raised the issue and questioned the secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Padraig MacKernan. He told them that we now have 41 resident embassies and that there were good cases for opening consulate generals in Toronto and Shanghai. Chairman Jim Mitchell asked the representative of the Department of Finance if he thought there was an economic case for greater representation abroad? "I doubt," said the civil servant, "that the Department of Finance would ever suggest that . . . The department views the approximately £60 million it costs to run the foreign service as money well spent. I do not believe it would suggest otherwise. Money well spent is different from money spent well, which is another subject to which we give consideration." What's the difference? asked Pat Rabbitte. Money well spent, said the man from Merrion Street, means one gets a good economic return. When, for example, there is a staffing demand, the big overseer - Finance - asks the department concerned to justify the demand not just in economic terms but also to show it could not meet it from it own resources. Proposals for new missions will be examined he said "not just in terms of cost but also in light of the return". So there you have it.
Rabbitte made this contribution: "It may be inappropriate but I am reminded of an economist who claims that a consultancy examined this question (diplomatic representation abroad) at a time of retrenchment. He concluded that the only feasible way of discussing it was to invite the minister to name the number of missions we had abroad and any he could not name should shut down. Happily, in the interests of the country, that was not accepted."