Michael Lowry (Tipperary North, Independent)
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Question 166: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of officials that represented the State at the UN General Assembly each year from 1997 to 2004; if a youth representative has been included in the delegation for the duration of the General Assembly; if so, the way in which the representative was selected; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5186/05]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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Ireland is represented in the plenary sessions, and on the various Committees, of the UN General Assembly by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs assigned to the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations in New York. Occasionally, when necessary, representation is temporarily augmented by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs or from other Departments with direct responsibility for the issues under discussion.

The total number of officials that represented the State at various points during the General Assembly in the years from 1997 to 2004 are, respectively, 30, 25, 37, 47, 40, 44, 47 and 42. These figures represent the total number of officials that were officially accredited at the commencement of the General Assembly session to represent Ireland in the plenary session and at various stages in the six main committees: disarmament and international security; economic and financial; social, humanitarian and cultural; special political and decolonisation; administrative and budgetary; and legal. Most of these officials were present only for short periods. The accredited list would typically also include a number of alternate official representatives to cover for such contingencies as the unavailability, through competing obligations, of the officials most directly involved. It is not the practice to include a youth representative in the delegation. I am not aware that this is a widely observed practice among other delegations.