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

I am pleased to present the Revised Estimates for my Department for 2022. I hope committee members are not tired of listening to me given our conversations yesterday and again today. I will try to move through the Revised Estimates as quickly as I can.

I will focus on Vote 28 - foreign affairs. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, will address the committee afterwards with regard to Vote 27 - international co-operation, which has become more complex in the past number of years given the pressures of Covid and now the pressures of war.

Members will have seen the advance briefing notes provided by my Department on the two Votes, which summarise the main activities and priorities under each expenditure programme. For 2022, the overall gross Estimate for the foreign affairs group of Votes, Votes 27 and 28, is €921 million. This represents a €69 million increase on its 2021 allocation, which is a significant increase given the pressures we were under.

For 2022, the gross expenditure allocation for Vote 28, including a capital allocation of €22.5 million, is €316 million. This is an overall increase of just over €35 million or 12%. This increase has been allocated to programmes to assist the Department in meeting the many challenges and opportunities we face in the coming year.

Over the past two weeks, we have seen the scale and horror of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has shocked us all. As we have just discussed, my Department is at the centre of this country’s response and will remain so. The scale of events means that our existing priorities, at home and abroad, will need to change. This will bring its own budgetary challenges and require reprioritisation and reallocation of resources. Our work will form part of a wider Government-led response across all Departments.

As has been proposed, I will now proceed to make some short introductory comments on each of the programmes in sequence. Programme A, our people, which is an allocation of €98 million, covers many key policy areas for my Department, including consular services and assistance; the passport service, which is a significant increase in spend this year; our emigrant support programme; and Northern Ireland. Under this programme, the Department has been provided with an allocation of €10 million from the Covid contingency fund for extra spend on passport services. Demand for passports continues to be very strong. In February 2022, the passport service received a record 156,000 new passport applications. To put that into context, January set the previous all-time record of 137,000. We are in completely new passport territory this year. This is the highest volume of monthly applications ever received and is a result of the pent-up demand for passports following the relaxation of necessary travel restrictions due to the Covid pandemic. We anticipate 1.4 million applications this year compared with 900,000, the previous highest figure, in 2019. One month ago, we thought the figure might reach 1.7 million this year. The estimate is now 1.4 million, which is still 500,000 more than ever before.

Since June 2021, more than 300 members of staff at all grades have been assigned to the passport service. My Department has worked closely with the Public Appointments Service to recruit additional staff over the past several months. In addition, the passport service is running its own recruitment competition for temporary clerical officers with a view to assigning additional staff and maintaining staffing levels throughout the year to meet the demand expected in the coming months.

Furthermore, in the context of the national development plan, the Department is making a major investment in the future of the passport service.

Over the next couple of years, we will replace the core technology underpinning the service, which will deliver efficiencies and a more resilient passport system. It will also give us more options for managing the security arrangements in respect of how we accept passport applications.

The processing of foreign birth registration resumed in November 2021. Due to the complex nature of the foreign birth registration process, applicants should allow approximately two years from the receipt of supporting documentation for processing of applications at this time. Increased resources are being allocated to work on foreign birth registration applications as additional staff are assigned to the passport service.

The 2022 allocation for the emigrant support programme remains at €12.6 million, the same level as it was in 2021. The past two years have demonstrated more than ever the need to continue to support and deepen our bonds with our vibrant and diverse global Irish community, in particular, the need to innovate and diversify the ways in which we connect with it. I am meeting some of those diverse communities in New York this week. That is very much a partnership for how we will listen to the Irish abroad and what they need and want. I commend the work of my colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora, Deputy Brophy, who will take any questions members may have on these issues later.

This programme also deals with matters relating to Northern Ireland, North-South co-operation and British-Irish relations, which are a particular emphasis of my Department. We remain focused on strengthening our relationship with the UK in the post-Brexit context, which has not been straightforward, as members will be aware.

The focus of work under programme B, our place in Europe, which is allocated €39 million, will be to safeguard Ireland’s interests in the broader context of Brexit and the future direction and policies of the Union. It will also support Ireland's contribution to the EU's global engagement on peace, security, trade and development, as well as security in the wider European region.

Programme B is also used to fund projects and proposals that further Ireland's Common Foreign and Security Policy, CFSP, priorities, support EU engagement and support the placing of Irish personnel in EU and international institutions. In case anybody does not know, we will assume the Presidency of the Council of Europe from May to November of this year. It is an interesting time to take that presidency, particularly since Russia has just pulled out of the Council of Europe. The Department's costs associated with Ireland's upcoming Presidency of the Council of Europe and the EU50 programme, marking the 50th anniversary of Ireland’s accession to the European Union, will also be met from this programme.

Programme C is entitled Our Values. The majority of current expenditure under programme C, which has an allocation of €62 million, consists of Ireland's contributions to international organisations. The allocation set aside for these contributions, at €40 million, is a €6 million increase on last year reflecting the first year of contributions to the European Peace Facility, EPF, which is a facility that many people know much more about now than they did two weeks ago. Our estimate for allocation to the European Peace Facility for this year was €5.4 million. Clearly, we will be going well beyond that.

The EPF, established this year, funds EU Common Security and Defence Policy, CSDP, with a financial ceiling of €5.7 billion for the period 2021 to 2027. We are already seeing significant pressure on this fund arising from the Ukrainian crisis and Ireland will have to make additional contributions this year. On 27 February, EU foreign ministers agreed an EPF package of €500 million in assistance for Ukraine. Ireland will contribute to the funding for non-lethal equipment only. Ireland's contribution to this measure will amount to approximately €10.5 million, or perhaps closer to €11 million, this year. It is clear that this assistance to Ukraine absorbs the bulk of the EPF ceiling for commitments for 2022, which is €540 million in total spend for the EU.

This means it is likely that the overall budgetary implications of the EPF for member states in 2022 will be significantly higher than anticipated. It is not possible to provide a definitive estimate of the increase this year at this stage as the European External Action Service, EEAS, is still working on detailed proposals in this regard. I hope members will work with me on that. We may have to come back to it later in the year to provide clarity.

Under programme D, Our Prosperity, which has an allocation of €44 million, there will be particular focus in 2022 on assisting Irish business to identify new opportunities as we emerge from the global pandemic. To this end, we will continue our highly successful collaborations with other Departments and State agencies, which deliver effective results for our citizens and business sector.

Our annual St. Patrick’s Day programme also comes under this programme. This year, in the wake of the pandemic, we will connect with our communities at home and overseas, and especially the people of Ukraine. We will mark this St. Patrick's Day with solidarity rather than celebration and express our Irish identity by rededicating ourselves to democratic and humanitarian values. One of the tangible things we will do this year is to look at using our greening programme to project Ukrainian colours in parts of the world where we think solidarity would be respected and appreciated instead of projecting green onto major symbols, buildings, etc., around the world.

Programme E, entitled Our Effectiveness, involves an allocation of €50 million. It covers the management and development of staff, the management and mitigation of risk, ICT, property management and compliance with statutory and legal obligations. The programme also covers communication by the Department of its policies, objectives and activities to citizens at home and abroad.

The resources for the Global Ireland 2025 strategy are managed under this programme. This year, consulates will open in Miami, Toronto and Lyon and an embassy will open in Dakar, Senegal. It cannot be underestimated how important this programme is. Having infrastructure on the ground in Rabat and Kyiv, for instance, allowed us to provide direct assistance and support to hundreds of Irish citizens and their families to get safely home. Can members imagine if we had been one of the only countries in Europe not to have an embassy in Kyiv in the build-up to this conflict? It is a reminder of the importance of expanding our global footprint to parts and regions of the world where Ireland needs to have an influence and a say, and to be reporting back from the ground.

That is a brief overview of the main activities and priorities of the Department of Foreign Affairs for the year. I welcome any comments and questions members may have. In truth, unlike in many other Departments, there is generally not much controversy in the Department of Foreign Affairs when it comes to the budget, particularly outside the development aid side, which is where most of the money is spent. My Department's challenges normally involve policy development and diplomacy, the right interventions at the right time, etc., but the budget is not insignificant either. I look forward to members' questions and comments and I will try to provide as much information as I can.