Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As I said at the time, the appointment of the Secretary General of my Department as non-resident ambassador to the Holy See signalled the importance and significance which the Government attaches to our diplomatic relations with the Holy See. We have a small but good diplomatic service. Our representation in terms of the countries wherein we have resident missions and the number of diplomats therein is approximately half that of countries of similar size. We have approximately 75 resident missions, some of which are to the multilateral organisations such as the United Nations, European Union and so on. We have 58 bilateral resident missions. In other words, we are represented in only 58 of the 190 states that are members of the United Nations.

To take Latin America as an example, we have resident ambassadors in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, and that is it. We have to review on an ongoing basis where we have our missions and how best to deploy them. It is something we will be doing again at the conclusion of the Irish Presidency.

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