Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

The Senator is correct. A number of Senators raised this matter on Second Stage in the House and I assure them that the development aid sector, including Irish Aid, is very determined that representatives on the ground, who are supervising enormous sums of money on the taxpayers' behalf in parts of Africa, where we operate on a programme-country basis, will not suffer any disadvantage by dint of the fact that they are deemed to have chargé d'affaires status rather than full ambassador status. A number of ambassadors in the countries in which we operate raised this matter with me informally during my many visits to the African programme countries. On foot of a visit in December, at which time I was new in my job, I decided I would take the matter in hand and bring it to a conclusion. I am delighted that my senior colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, agreed with me when I raised the matter with him. As a result of a Cabinet decision made yesterday, he has endorsed our position.

Some Members may ask why we are only upgrading the status of representatives in Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Lesotho from chargé d'affaires to ambassador. We are doing so because these countries are the ones in which we were most involved over a long period. We have deliberately decided not to upgrade pro tempore the status of the chargés d'affaires located in both Uganda and Ethiopia.

Members of this House will be very much aware that we take an interest in development issues in these countries but have concerns regarding both. In the past month or so, there was a donor assessment meeting on the circumstances in Ethiopia, which was attended by my officials and officials from other European donor countries. An Oireachtas committee will report to me in the next month or so about circumstances in Uganda following the election in that country. For all sorts of reasons concerning the difficulties and challenges faced in both Ethiopia and Uganda, we decided not to upgrade the status of the representatives therein for the time being. We did not want to send the wrong signal to the Governments in question. They might believe that by upgrading the status of our representatives, we are in some way approving some of their policies or being less than forceful in our concerns about particular developments in both countries. I hope we will see signs of improvement in those countries.

As I indicated to Senators a number of weeks ago, the White Paper to be published in July should set out the principled policy of people who represent us in aid offices abroad being full ambassadors. While it is a principle of policy, there will always be pragmatic administrative or other policy reasons the Department might not wish to upgrade a particular mission at a particular time to the full status of embassy, having an ambassador. This would apply, for instance, in East Timor, or Timor-Leste as it is sometimes called, which has a very small operation and the wisdom of upgrading it to full embassy remains to be determined at this stage. We will consider that mission in the context of the White Paper.

The general purpose of the Bill is to upgrade the status, efficiency and professionalism of the operations we have abroad. In some of these countries, we are spending up to €35 million. It is important that officials supervising such amounts have the full rank and confidence that the title of ambassador brings.