Foreign Affairs Dept stands by employee's sacking

The Department of Foreign Affairs tonight stood over its decision to sack an embassy employee with nearly 17 years service.

Eduardo Ramos, a Filipino, was employed as the house manager in the Irish embassy in Paris but he was told that the incoming ambassador Anne Anderson would prefer to have a woman in the post for personal reasons.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said Ms Anderson had used her personal discretion in making an appointment to this “sensitive domestic post”.

“As the Department has repeatedly pointed out, housekeeping staff in Embassy residences are the personal employees of the incumbent Ambassador. The department’s rules are quite explicit on this point and reflect international practice,” it said in a statement.

The department said that Ms Anderson had given Mr Ramos three-and-a-half months to move out of the embassy, rather than the one month specified in his contract.

Mr Ramos currently lives on the fourth floor of the building with his wife and daughter.

“I will find another job but it’s difficult for me because we have a baby. It’s difficult as well because we don’t know where to go. It’s really difficult to find an apartment in Paris,” he said.

He told RTE radio that he was suing the department for compensation.

“If they will give me compensation, that’s fine. If the next ambassador doesn’t have me, that’s fine, that’s no problem for me. But in 17 years I work in the embassy and then they just dump me without nothing.”

The previous ambassador, Padraig MacKernan, refused to terminate the contract of Mr Ramos when he left Paris last week, so a letter was issued instead from the personnel section of the department telling him that his employment had been terminated.

Mr MacKernan, a former Secretary General of the department, had hired Mr Ramos as a tutor to his family when he was Ambassador to Washington and had kept him in employment when he moved to different embassies.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ statement contained several references to Mr MacKernan, including the fact that he had been allowed to choose his household staff and that the rules had been consistently implemented while he was Secretary General.

It also said that it regretted the ‘distorted manner’ in which the media had been briefed on the issue.

However, when the Department of Foreign Affairs was asked what exactly it was referring to, a spokeswoman said she could not comment.