Mr. Denis Staunton:

To start with the last point, I am not sure it has made all that much difference whether a US ambassador is appointed. From what I understand, and I am not there now but on the basis of visits I have made to the US and conversations I have had with people, I do not believe it has any meaning. A number of other countries, including some large and important countries close to the United States, did not have an ambassador appointed for over a year. It has been about two years here, and that is an unusually long period, but I do not believe it says anything about the US attitude towards Ireland. Given there is a fairly effective US embassy in Dublin, I do not believe the lack of an appointment has made that much difference in terms of investment or anything like that.
On the general issue of the diaspora and the suggestion made by Senator Daly, and the various options Deputy Byrne and Deputy Crowe spoke about, I am not sure what the answer is with regard to what Ireland should do. Many of the ideas put forward are very good. It is a question of first evaluating, perhaps in this foreign policy review, the importance to us of this network of people and how we can best engage these people and give them some sense of ownership of what is happening here as well as calling on them to help us.
That brings me to the bigger point, and as Deputy Byrne suggested, it is the most difficult issue, namely, the business of money. I would argue that we must have a whole of Government approach to the fact we are a country that exports everything we produce and imports almost everything we consume. It is operating in an environment where global capital is not only global; it is mobile. Everything is moving so fast in this particular way that it will be impossible for us to pursue our interests properly or govern ourselves as well as we should if we do not invest more in foreign representation.
To give the Senator another example, leaving aside issues of trade, there is the business of representation in European Union capitals. Since the economic crisis, we have seen a massive and dramatic integration and pooling of sovereignty in the European Union, particularly on economic issues. That simply means we share the mastery of our own fate with other people, and the voices of people in Tallinn, Riga, Prague, Copenhagen and Lisbon matter as much as the voices of those in many other countries. I would argue that we should administer ourselves efficiently in the world we live in today. We cannot operate the kind of budgetary policy with regard to foreign affairs that we would have operated 50 years ago because we live in a different world. More of our world is connected with the rest of the world.
Deputy O'Sullivan spoke about the way we are perceived. There is no question, and Deputy Crowe mentioned it, that we are fortunate in terms of the way we are perceived, generally speaking, around the world. To those who are aware of it, the issue of tax, not just the traditional issue of the level of our corporate tax, and the discovery that major digital giants have been able to use our tax regime to effectively escape paying tax anywhere on vast sums, is damaging to our reputation. I am pleased the Government has taken some action with regard to easing some of the most grievous elements of that regime but it is something of which we must be aware.
At the same time, the Deputy is right that our engagement in terms of development aid is to our benefit, not only in terms of the way we are perceived as a responsible actor in the world but also because many of the countries that have been our traditional aid partners are becoming more economically developed. Without trying to tie our aid to trade, we can be beneficiaries of the fact that we have been investing resources within that area.
With regard to the embassies, if it were up to me, I am not sure I would have closed the Tehran embassy, but on the issue of the Holy See, there is curiosity with regard to the Vatican's rule whereby it insists we must have a separate ambassador. I imagine that is because it expects if it did not, it would not have an embassy as countries would appoint the ambassador to Rome. However, other countries have taken ingenious approaches to reducing the cost of having this embassy. It is important, and it is not a question of how one views the influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland, that we should be in a position to monitor what is happening in the Vatican as closely as possible. That may be more true now than ever that the Vatican appears to be going through something of a change.
To return to the question the Chairman posed on the role of parliamentarians, it is a very important one. This committee plays an important role in holding the Government to account with regard to foreign policy but also in exploring issues such as those we have been discussing today. The members also play an important role on behalf of the people in terms of their travels to other countries where they can learn first-hand what is happening, particularly in some of the more obscure countries that are under-reported, even in The Irish Times, and from where it is difficult to report in many cases. It is also the issue the Chairman mentioned earlier about members making themselves available to representatives of other countries here. That, too, can enhance our relationships with important partners.