Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, the purpose of today's exercise is to set out for the committee the nature of the review of foreign policy and our external engagement that we are conducting and to locate it also in the context of the review of trade, the White Paper on development, the review of the EAS and a number of other developments that are taking place.

I join members of the committee in paying tribute to the staff of the Department and the staff of the embassies. It is encouraging to hear the complimentary remarks that have been made here by several members of the committee.

We are stretched. We have 58 bilateral missions and a total of 73 missions altogether when one takes into account the multilateral organisations. Compared to countries of similar size, it is small. They do a great job. They have had a particularly difficult job to do - Deputy Durkan made reference to this - over the course of the past couple of years where we had this moment of crisis and we had to try and restore the country's reputation. They have very successfully done that. We have talked a great deal about exit from the bailout, the renegotiation of it, the terms of it, etc., and one cannot do that successfully unless one has had strong diplomatic engagement, both with other countries and with international organisations. That has been successfully done. The success of the European Union Presidency, the OSCE chairmanship and Ireland's election to the Human Rights Council all have added to our reputation as a country and we can build on that.

We now must look forward to where we are going. As I stated earlier, our engagement with Europe is hugely important. That is one part of our external engagement. If one looks at where trade is developing, and one looks at Asia and Africa, for example, we have an Africa strategy. One may look at Latin America. These are all parts of the world where the potential for expanded trade is quite significant.

In response to the point that Deputy Eric Byrne made, there are a range of Departments that have a trade dimension to them. There are obvious ones such as Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and my Department, but, for example, in the Department of Education and Skills, which would not have been traditionally been regarded as a trade Department, there is now a significant level of trade in education. My Department brings together all of the Departments and State agencies and representatives of the private sector, including the Irish Exporters' Association, into a single Export Trade Council, which I chair, where we consider trade strategy, etc. For example, trade missions are co-ordinated by us. Those are agreed between myself and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Proposals are made, mainly from Enterprise Ireland, but from some of the other agencies as well, and we look at them. We have a co-ordinated strategy across government in terms of how we do our trade. We have a joined-up approach to it.

For the first time in six years, there is a recruitment process underway for third secretaries in the Department. The intention is to recruit 40 third secretaries. That will assist in the exercise.

I will not get into individual embassies or missions, other than to say that the decision on location of embassies is not based on whether we agree with the Government or leadership of the country concerned from time to time because these aspects will change. Some of the decisions that we have had to make in recent years have had to be made for financial reasons. Given that we have a small team, we must be focused and adaptable and we have to be willing to change. We will continue to make those changes and to ensure that we have a presence where it matters and that is appropriate to the size of our overall diplomatic effort.

On a practical question, the closing date for public submissions is 4 February. My intention would be to have the review of foreign policy completed in the early part of next year and I hope to be in a position by the middle of next year to set out an updated statement of Irish foreign policy and our external relations. The last review of this kind was done as part of the White Paper exercise in 1996. The country has changed, the world has changed and Europe has changed since 1996 and we need to update it.