Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)
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As we stated on Second Stage, this Bill is primarily a technical one to limit the mandate of the Government in extending its role beyond that agreed at the Vienna Convention discussions, as referred to in the Bill. Given that the convention, upon which this section of the legislation is based, effectively reiterated the entire architecture of diplomacy and relations between states, I would be grateful if the Minister of State should explain recent decisions by his Department to change the status of a number of our representatives, specifically in the African countries. It was asked on Second Stage why the current Irish representative in Zambia, for example, retained the title of "chargé d'affaires" as distinct from "ambassador". Similar circumstances obtain in other African countries.

I commend the Minister of State on having acted very quickly in response to the Seanad debate. One would like to believe that he acted as a result of that debate. Perhaps he will outline for us the changes that have been effected in the countries in question.

Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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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.

Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for his clarification regarding the rankings of our diplomatic staff in the countries mentioned. In the ranking of diplomatic speak, if I may use that term, I understand that if a country wishes to display its displeasure to another country with which it has diplomatic relations, what is called a "démarche" would be sent and there would be the possibility of the ambassador or chargé being called in. What is the significance of Ireland taking the decision not to upgrade the diplomatic missions in Ethiopia and Uganda? How will this decision be interpreted by the two Governments?

As the Minister of State is aware, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs has debated the morality of overseas development aid being given to countries which on the face of it seem to have a very poor governance record. Members on all sides of the House are aware the Government took its decision on Ethiopia because of the violence surrounding the elections there and the alleged flawed nature of those elections. However, Uganda is a headline maker and rarely out of the news. In providing in excess of €30 million, Ireland is a substantial donor country to Uganda. Unlike in Ethiopia, some of that money goes directly to the Ugandan Government. Questions have been raised about the corruption on the part of that Government. Does the Minister of State believe that taking this decision now sends a powerful message?

With the Chair's indulgence, I wish to ask about the decision of the Department of Foreign Affairs not to exchange ambassadors with Burma-Myanmar. This matter, in which I and other Members of the House have a continuing interest, was raised on Second Stage. An appalling human rights disaster continues in Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be kept under house arrest. The democratic wish of the Burmese people has been constantly denied and in recent weeks a bizarre decision has been taken by the junta there to relocate its capital to the border region, which is causing enormous disruption and is creating severe difficulties for the ethnic communities in the region to which it is proposing to move.

It seems like something out of science fiction to attempt to relocate from Rangoon to some isolated part of Myanmar. While I accept it is outside the scope of the Bill, the narrow question is about the decision not to exchange ambassadors and whether the Minister of State can assure the House that he will continue to press the military junta to bring itself into line with international best practice on human rights and good governance.

Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Senator's intervention regarding Burma and the other countries he mentioned earlier. I will deal with the last one first. As I indicated on the previous occasion when the Bill came before the House, Ireland is one of the foremost countries in utterly condemning the terrible acts of the Burmese junta. As the Senator is aware, Europe applies some element of exclusion on senior officials from that country travelling to Europe and we participate in that scheme. We are extremely concerned about the ongoing suggestions or allegations of genocide in that country. A number of NGOs have urged me and other European governments to consider initiating a legal case against Burma over allegations of genocide. Obviously no such case would be initiated unless we felt it had a good chance of success before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. This is one of a number of matters that some of our EU partners are considering.

Obviously, it would be catastrophic for any country or group of countries to begin such an action, creating the expectation that it might succeed. Were it to fail, it would have a negative effect and would be used by the unscrupulous regime in Burma to discredit generally international campaigns designed to bring it to account for human rights abuses there. We would not intend expanding diplomatic relations with that country by extending the courtesy of having ambassadors accredited to it. While we have diplomatic relations with Burma, these were established during our EU Presidency as it was necessary to communicate EU concerns directly to the regime, but it did not confer any level of approval on the regime.

We are sending a signal to both Ethiopia and Uganda that we will not extend the title of ambassador to our representatives in those countries as it could be interpreted wrongly as some signal of approval of what is going on in those countries. As we have done in Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Lesotho we would be willing to upgrade our diplomatic representation in those countries to full embassy status should we see discernible signs of improvement and redressing the wrongs that have occurred in those countries in recent months. There are no easy solutions to this issue.

This week I spent time in Paris with the OECD's development committee where 22 of the richest donors in the world were gathered. We had a significant discussion about Ethiopia. The 22 donors came from Asia, Europe and the continent of America. All of them are as perplexed and challenged as we are regarding involvement in Ethiopia. There are no easy solutions. Some people would like us simply to pull the plug on our aid programme. However, doing so would cause serious damage to some of the poorest people in the world.

The issues that have been considered are what are called the "aid modalities". Many of our donor colleagues in Europe and beyond are now switching the nature of their support in that country. The UK, which had commenced direct budget support, has now withdrawn it. As Ireland had never extended full budget support to Ethiopia, we never needed to withdraw it. We will certainly not extend direct budget support to either Ethiopia or Uganda until we see improvements there.

Other countries are considering aid modalities which Ireland was involved in setting up. We participated in the establishment of a programme of safety nets that prevents 7 million people in Ethiopia from starving every year. Along with other donor countries, Ireland funds the basic social support net in question. We actually designed this particular social net and we were very involved in its creation. It helps to eliminate the potential for the deaths of approximately 7 million people in Ethiopia. The United Kingdom is switching much of the money that it formerly allocated as direct budget support to the mechanism that we were involved in creating and fund on an ongoing basis. I do not want to sound too patriotic by calling it "our mechanism".

There are significant issues in this regard. The chairman of the OECD development assistance committee has recommended that we should continue to engage with Ethiopia and Uganda. The committee acts like a referee on matters of development policy — it makes recommendations of best practice and tries to encourage other members of the OECD to adopt best practice. The chairman of the committee, Mr. Richard Manning, has advised us that large donors and slightly smaller donors like Ireland should retain our engagements in both countries, while intensifying the level of diplomatic pressure we put on the regimes there to change and to rectify the damage they may have done. He also said we should consider changing the underlying systems of financial support that we offer to Ethiopia and Uganda, for example by ring-fencing our funds in a manner that ensures they cannot be tampered or interfered with by the relevant governments. We have been given that advice by the chairman of a committee, of which Ireland is a member, which is the most important body in the development sphere. We will take that course of action — we certainly do not intend to disengage ourselves from either country in the short term.

Disengagement from Ethiopia and Uganda remains a possibility if the circumstances there deteriorate, or if we learn that the Prime Ministers of those countries are continuing to ignore the best advice that has been tendered and offered by the international donors with whom we work on the ground. I hope we do not find ourselves knocking on a door when nobody is responding to the suggestions we make, but if that happens it is obvious that we will have to consider the ultimate solution, which is to begin a process of disengagement. We are not ruling out such a solution but for the time being we continue to feel, thankfully, that there is room to exert diplomatic and other pressure to bring the Ethiopian and Ugandan regimes to account for the things which have occurred in those countries.

Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, for his work on what is essentially a technical Bill. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the debate on this legislation is that it is one of the rare occasions when a Government comes to a Parliament to seek to limit its powers. This Bill will limit the Government's powers by ensuring that Ireland conforms with what it signed up to under the Vienna Convention in the early 1990s. This debate has given Members an opportunity to thank the Department of Foreign Affairs, its ambassadors, its chargés d'affaires and its entire staff throughout the world who represent this country so well. We are all extremely proud of what they do.

Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)
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I join Senator Mooney in thanking the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, for his co-operation in expediting this Bill, which we considered with some degree of fullness on Second Stage. There was a limited number of speakers on this technical Bill because it is not politically exciting, although it is important. It was necessary for the House to complete its consideration of the Bill this afternoon. I thank the Minister of State for attending this debate and for listening to what Senators had to say on Second Stage. I concur with Senator Mooney's remarks about the Minister of State's staff and this country's broader diplomatic staff throughout the world, who represent Ireland in an effective, diligent and professional manner.

Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Senators for their co-operation. Some Members asked on Second Stage about the number of women serving at the highest level in the Department of Foreign Affairs. I am delighted to inform the House that three additional women were appointed as ambassadors in the latest package of ambassadorial appointments.

Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)
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Hear, hear.

Pat Moylan (Fianna Fail)
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When is it proposed to sit again?

Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)
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At 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 26 April 2006.