Ms Marie Cross:

-----it is open for debate. I feel there is a lot to be said for a Civil Service involvement being maintained because we work under the rules of the Civil Service but I agree it is an issue.

Deputy Eric Byrne asked how we balance the opening of missions. It is a difficult issue because the resources, in line with the country’s economic situation, have been cut in recent years and choices have to be made. We now have a very lean foreign service. As I mentioned to Deputy Dooley, what has been cut back significantly is the number of people in the missions abroad. We have quite a number of missions now that have one person from Ireland.

I feel one gets a very good return on having a person in the place, living and imbibing the culture. The information they pass back is invaluable. That is all the more so now, as Dr. Ivory has said, because we have such a heavy input. A huge amount of the work of missions abroad is related to the promotion of the economic potential. Having somebody in place who can work on the ground with the people who matter, find out what is happening, pass back information on contacts and work with the local business communities gives a great return for money. We must be realistic. A balance is required. Politically, we would like to be in certain places. Iran is a case in point. However, we must make choices on where our interests lie at a particular time. We are opening up a number of new missions and we expect that they will pay for themselves in the long run as we will get business promotion, better information on political interests and development return. The missions we open will have to pay for themselves as that is how we balance the situation. We have to make choices.

I accept Deputy Byrne’s point about languages. It is one I meant to mention. It is a big inhibiting factor for us that we do not have better skills in languages. One can see it very clearly in meetings where officials can relate to each other because they speak the languages. For example, in the whole political co-operation aspect of the EU there are two languages – French and English – and there is no interpretation in any of the committees. All of our diplomats who service this plethora of committees have to be completely fluent in French. It is sometimes a struggle because as a country I do not think we have accepted the value of languages, in particular in terms of the EU. That is an area on which the Department needs to focus and is focusing on to a greater extent.

It is a question of resources. Should we release someone to spend a year in China, Japan or Egypt, as big countries do?