Carol Nolan (Offaly, Independent)
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135. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to list all ambassadors stationed abroad, their salaries, all Irish embassies and consulates abroad and the cost in 2024 of maintaining each such embassy or consulate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [58371/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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My Department's global network of diplomatic missions includes Embassies, Consulates General and missions to multilateral organisations such as the European Union and the United Nations.

Under Global Ireland 2025, the Government set out to expand our footprint and deepen our impact in priority regions. This programme has included the establishment of 25 new diplomatic missions. Two further diplomatic missions will open during 2026 with the establishment of Consulates General in Melbourne and Málaga.

These new diplomatic missions leverage opportunities to grow our trade and inward investment, further strengthen political relationships with our partners, promote our values, play a more active role in supporting and promoting a rules-based international environment and support Irish citizens and our diaspora abroad. This expansion of our diplomatic footprint reflects the importance to a small open country and economy like Ireland of having a wider global presence in order to respond to new opportunities and challenges.

A list of Ireland’s diplomatic missions as of 31st December 2024 and of Ireland’s Ambassadors on that date are set out in the table below, together with the 2024 total operating costs of Ireland’s network of diplomatic missions.

Civil servants posted to our diplomatic missions are paid the standard salary for their grade as determined by the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation and are paid in accordance with the normal Irish taxation and social security obligations that apply to civil servants.