REPUTATION IS everything for a brand. And Brand Ireland, as Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore suggested yesterday in his address to Ireland’s diplomats, has taken “a severe battering”.
Those charged with flying the flag abroad have a difficult and particularly crucial challenge at this time, whether reassuring political allies or bond investors, traditional or new trading partners, or countering media doom and gloom. First the Lisbon fiasco, then economic collapse, shook Ireland’s political standing and authority, not least among EU partners.
Is Irish diplomacy then fit-for-purpose in these new times? The gathering with the Minister in Iveagh House of the heads of our 76 foreign missions is ostensibly an attempt to take stock and refocus the efforts. It is a gathering that is both timely and sensible. There have been suggestions that, as Prof Ben Tonra of UCD put it in this newspaper yesterday, maybe our diplomats have “been living off the capital ... generated over decades from being the ‘good Europeans’ and Ireland being the poster child of globalisation and EU membership.”
Whether diplomatic complacency is the problem, however, or the hard reality that the product being sold has become much more difficult to market, is debatable. The messenger or the message? In truth, the important shift being emphasised yesterday by the new Minister towards integrating economic and trade representation into the mainstream function of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has been well under way for some years – now the Department of Trade is also being brought into Iveagh House, although there appears to be some technical hiccup in that process.
Although an easy target for populist cuts – the champagne-lifestyle caricature sticks too readily and unfairly – the truth is that Ireland’s diplomatic representation is already significantly more modest in terms of extent and cheaper than many comparable countries. Sweden spends half as much again as us on foreign relations (as a share of GDP), and Norway, with a population just larger than ours, spends twice as much, and has 120 foreign missions and offices, to Ireland’s 76.
Foreign Affairs has also shared in the general public service cuts with cumulative cutbacks since 2008 running at almost 10 per cent of personnel and 18 per cent of running costs. Further embassy closures have been mooted, notably by economist Colm McCarthy, but would save relatively little – closure of the 10 smallest EU embassies would save only €2.5 million in the first year. They would also be counterproductive at a time when the real challenge for this exporting economy is to reach out. Why not embassies in Indonesia, or Chile?
A recognition of other new realities is also reflected in plans to transfer much of the Department of Foreign Affairs’s management of EU affairs to the Department of the Taoiseach. In the wake of Lisbon Treaty changes, prime ministers have eclipsed foreign ministers in the conduct of much EU business. There is also a good case that the authority of the Taoiseach’s Department would improve co-ordination of other departments’ EU work.