Diplomatic Representation
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

Deputy Ward has made all of his points very well. Again, it is important to remember that the focus of our missions abroad is primarily to support our citizens, to contribute to the promotion of our political and economic interests and to promote our culture internationally. I am familiar with a number of cases in the region that we will never see in the media or on social media where diplomats are really going out of their way to help Irish citizens who have got into difficulties of various kinds. We all know about these situations. They do incredible work. I said earlier that our embassy in Budapest looked after Serbia but it was actually our embassy in Bucharest. It was our embassy in Romania that looked after Serbia. However, the point is valid that having more embassies frees up resources, and it has freed up significant resources. There is now a significant focus on Serbia and Montenegro and, as I said, our embassies in Budapest and Bucharest can focus more on the work they do there. Embassies in places such as Bucharest are very busy because there is a huge connection between Ireland and Romania in terms of the movement of people. Again, if we look at Moldova, we have opened an embassy there. This is important from the point of view of it being an accession country but there are also a lot of people coming from Moldova to Ireland. This generates work for an embassy also.
There is a range of different factors that the Government has to take into account when opening embassies, primarily resources. I am hopeful in the context of the accession, without wishing to prejudge the situation, that the Government will be inclined to continue its position of having an embassy in every member state of the European Union. I can tell Deputy Ward that during the Brexit process it was very useful to have somebody in every capital. It was very useful to get our position across and explain the difficulties we were facing. When other countries are in difficulties we hear it directly if we have embassies there. I thank Deputy Ward for raising this point.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01