Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 7 September 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence

Appointment of Special Envoys: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There were a number of questions there. First, with regard to international practice, the paper of 29 March shows that Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK have a series of special envoys in a series of different areas, as do the United States and Canada. All the countries that are in the same foreign policy space as Ireland were doing this, which is why I never saw this as controversial. That may have been a mistake, but I thought the nomination of a special envoy in this area was consistent with our foreign policy and with what other countries were doing. I thought that Katherine Zappone's appointment would be welcomed because she has, effectively, campaigned all her life on some of these issues. That is where I was coming from on this.

It is slightly different with regard to Tom Arnold and Ken Thompson. The appointment of Tom Arnold as a special envoy for food systems came from two Departments, my Department and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Tom Arnold is an expert in development, nutrition and sustainable food production and he has done extensive work in that space, particularly in Africa, so he was an obvious choice. The way special envoys work is that when one wants a specific job done, generally, somebody gets hand-picked because of the skills set he or she has to do that job. It is often a temporary position. Sometimes it is not paid and sometimes it is paid; it depends on the circumstances.

It is different with regard to Ken Thompson because he was a special envoy for the Department of Foreign Affairs. As that special envoy role was not a Government special envoy, but a Department of Foreign Affairs special envoy, it did not go to the Cabinet. The reason Ken Thompson is in that role is that we do not have any ambassadors or embassies in Francophone Africa. That was a big part of our Security Council campaign so we asked him to work in that geographical part of Africa, and he has been doing a good job there.

That is the context for what we were doing.

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