New Third Secretaries in foreign affairs must be vital cog for Ireland Inc
International headlines once laudatory, turned damning. The real story was a lot more layered but complex truth doesn’t travel in fast moving events. Ireland went from hero to zero overnight.
Third Secretary is the entry grade for graduates into the diplomatic corps. About 25 are about to be recruited.
Attention may be focused on Niall Burgess since his appointment yesterday as incoming secretary general at the department of foreign affairs. However, the third secretaries may ultimately be more important. By 2050 when they are in their prime, and one is likely serving as secretary general, Ireland will either have succeeded or failed in repositioning itself in a radically changed world.
Their job is to imagine the world as it will be in 2050, and move on from assumptions overhanging from the 1950s. Having entered my 50th year, this is the lot that will see me, and likely most of you, out. They are our retirement fund. They better not mess it up. If they do, we will all be the losers.
The first 100 years of the existence of an independent Irish state has coincided with the global dominance of an Anglo and Atlantic sphere of influence. Small, but pivotally placed, within those spheres we have, recent experiences excepted, punched above our weight. But the world is turning. New spheres of power in Asia and around the Pacific are emerging. By 2050 the world will be a very different place. The old playbook that served so well, so far, will no longer be sufficient.
Sentiment and traction abroad matter enormously for our welfare at home. As a small economy, dependent on international trade in an increasingly globalised world, more decisions that matter will be made in board rooms, and at intra-national level abroad that ever before. The European Union, warts and all, is by far the best platform we have to make our case and fight our corner. We are free to go our own road of course. We are also free to go to hell.
The challenge is that as the world is changing radically, the United States and European Union remain immensely powerful and influential for us. We have to maintain and up our traction in Washington and Brussels. But the field of play where our interests are decided is also getting bigger and more complex. Our new junior diplomats will have to make their way in more far flung and multi-polar world than their elders ever did.
The aim for Niall Burgess meeting the new recruits should be to mould a corps of highly trained people who can provide context, including language and cultural awareness for companies, state organisation and ministers around the world, decades from now. Parts of the globe we are most familiar with now, will not be as important then. And if a lot of people will speak English, if we are tuned out of the local conversation we are going to be also-ran’s. Given our dependency on what happens abroad we can’t allow that to happen. We have to up-skill diplomatically, culturally and linguistically. Investment in people and training is critical. The eight new foreign missions planned are an infrastructure to be future-enabled by highly skilled people.
There are also fundamental questions to be faced around the positioning of foreign affairs within our government system. From the 1980s prime ministers replaced foreign ministers as the political fulcrum of the European Union. Since 2009 foreign ministers no longer even routinely attend most European Council meetings. The effective primacy of the Taoiseach’s department, if dependent for support on foreign affairs personnel, is accentuated by its parallel primacy on Northern Ireland. That matters less for now but only for so long that the continuing political failure to prioritise a still incomplete peace process, doesn’t return to haunt like the ghost of Christmas past.
The bigger picture for the future is that Foreign Affairs can provide indispensable boots on the ground, and the intellectual capacity of highly trained, connected officials. These are the political and cultural interpreters that we need to find our way forward. The Dutch have opted for a model where their trade and commercial representation is totally merged with their diplomatic one. In our much smaller system, it is questionable if we can afford to dilute our diplomatic expertise to such an extent.
There is a disconnect, however, only sporadically bridged between Foreign Affairs and the rest of the civil service beyond the Department of the Taoiseach. That doesn’t serve either vested interest or the national interest well. The fact that almost uniquely, the secretary general post in Foreign Affairs is outside the Top Level Appointment Committee (TLAC), underlines this.
Positioning Ireland in an increasingly multi-lateral diplomatic scene is critical already. This week it is not the Greek Presidency that is leading for the EU on Ukraine it is Cathy Ashton, the High Representative on Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Our input into that complex institutional and policy mix has to be targeted and when needs be it has to be very talented to be effective. Ashton’s job, together with a slew of other influential roles. including President of the Council and Commission concludes later this year. So too are the top jobs in NATO, the OSCE and the Council of Europe. The smoke filled rooms where all those decisions are taken are essentially the same.
THE deal-making is kaleidoscopic. A single shift changes everything else. Enda Kenny is in the frame but his denials of interest may have to be taken at face value. There is also a consideration in German diplomatic circles, if not necessarily political ones, that the job for the incoming Council President will be to draw a line in the sand on British asks for a potential treaty renegotiation. There are concerns that if there are limits beyond which several continental governments are unprepared to go, there may be few limits to which a former Irish Taoiseach might be prepared to go to keep Britain in the EU.
Preparation is already begun to have Ireland elected to the UN Security Council in 2020 for the first time since 2000. Finland and Canada came unstuck in their quest for that goal and we cannot take anything for granted. If we want to be where we need to be in 2050, being at the top table in places like the UN in 2020 are very useful staging posts.
Away from Brussels the diplomatic parlour game at home is political. If Eamon Gilmore leaves Iveagh House to spend more time courting a vexed electorate; who will replace him? One view is that the only way to move James Reilly, the deputy leader of Fine Gael out of Health, without apparently demoting him is to appoint him to Foreign Affairs. That is only a yarn for now, with a working title called From Rush with Love.
