Diplomatic Representation.

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Questions (605)

John O'Mahony

Question:

665 Deputy John O’Mahony asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the location of each Irish embassy and consular offices globally; the number of staff employed in each; the cost to the State for each in 2007, 2008 and 2009 in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1144/10]

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Written answers

Minister for Foreign Affairs (Deputy Micheál Martin)

The Irish Diplomatic Network is made up of 75 overseas missions, in addition to offices in Armagh and Belfast. The network consists of 58 Embassies, 7 multilateral missions and 10 Consulates General and other offices overseas. In addition to their country of primary accreditation, many Ambassadors are also accredited to additional countries on a non-resident basis. A detailed table giving staffing and costs of overseas missions is set out below.

In addition to resident Irish missions, there are also 19 Honorary Consuls General and 68 Honorary Consuls who provide assistance to Irish citizens in 57 countries.

The staff numbers for each Mission are broken down between locally employed staff and Irish based civil servants, who are on temporary diplomatic assignment abroad. While most of the 386 Irish based diplomatic staff serving overseas are from my Department, approximately 90 are from other Government Departments.

The annual costs as set out in the table below for 2007, 2008 and 2009 are the administrative costs of operating the mission. The figure does not include the salaries of the Irish based staff as these are a charge on the overall salaries budget of the Department rather than on a specific mission. In addition to the administrative costs of operating a mission, many Embassies fund programmes in their respective countries, in particular the missions which fund Irish Aid activities. For example, while in 2008 the Embassy in Ethiopia had administrative costs of €1.1 million, it managed an aid programme of €36 million through the Mission in that year.

The administrative costs of offices in Irish Aid Programme Countries (highlighted in bold) are often high due to issues such as the additional security required in a developing country context. In addition to the normal staffing of Irish Aid offices, which generally consists of a small number of Irish diplomats, working with a maximum of three specialist technical staff from Ireland and a small number of locally-recruited administrative staff (as detailed below), there are often additional staff required to engage in programme activities or staff who are hired to provide specific services such as security (such staff are not included in the following table).

Also, from time to time Missions may incur significant capital expenditure in relation to their premises or for upgrading of essential infrastructure. These capital costs are not included in the annual administrative costs as detailed below.

	Mission Staff Numbers	Administrative Costs of Operating Mission
Mission	Locally Employed staff	Irish Based Staff	2007	2008	2009
Abu Dhabi (Opened 2009)	3	2			429,990
Abuja	6	6	260,424	548,135	372,660
Addis Ababa	5	4	1,199,888	1,064,185	898,000
Ankara	4	3	412,851	429,022	405,487
Athens	4	3	532,525	477,093	484,116
Beijing	13	8	789,116	838,728	973,084
Berlin	6	6	999,025	1,181,612	1,009,825
Berne	3	2	331,968	463,006	507,174
Boston	3	2	365,638	353,824	472,391
Brasilia	4	2	540,443	510,761	450,012
Bratislava	3	2	384,325	380,840	416,857
Brussels (Embassy)	4	2	864,474	852402	955,926
Brussels (P.F.P.)	0	6	338,430	273,685	274,137
Brussels (Pr-Eu)	6	81	3,582,121	3,457,843	3,805,678
Bucharest	5	2	566,044	577,947	484,421
Budapest	4	1	485,572	511,156	495,581
Buenos Aires	3.6	2	351,725	372,254	383,751
Cairo	6	5	445,209	569,536	500,311
Canberra	7.5	4	742,471	743,869	681,238
Cardiff (Closed 2009)	0	0	213,966	182,170	79,757
Chicago	3.4	2	383,173	358,542	325,799
Copenhagen	4	2	540,031	476,526	430,412
Dar Es Salaam	5	4	819,916	1,242,513	1,049,784
Dili	2	3	205,402	189,962	211,483
Edinburgh	1	3	319,133	261,682	227,646
Freetown	1	2	197,673	204,871	215,114
Geneva	3	9	1,124,538	1,096,146	1,134,003
Hanoi	5	4	609,377	743,614	580,390
Helsinki	3	2	655,345	634,690	637,618
Holy See	3	2	740,532	498,334	437,683
Kampala	5	4	1,376,603	1,915,553	1,338,000
Kuala Lumpur	5	2	380,607	418,700	359,821
Lilongwe	2	4	413,536	717,165	623,196
Lisbon	3	2	496,611	548,396	437,493
Ljubljana	4	2	454,887	489,219	428,186
London	11	52	5,610,590	4,669,648	4,065,867
Lusaka	5	4	1,293,799	1,499,747	1,586,698
Luxembourg	4	2	716,923	709,845	738,042
Madrid	8	7	1,242,986	1,273,566	1,239,494
Maputo	5	4	1,377,425	1,717,913	1,427,000
Maseru	3	2	700,082	795,256	523,259
Mexico	5	3	696,226	598,562	475,576
Moscow	10	9	970,958	896,238	873,407
New Delhi	8	7	669,453	839,809	611,455
New York — C.G.	13	5	2,281,554	1,903,026	1,920,283
New York — Pmun	6	10	2,443,225	*2,681,074	1,546,199
Nicosia	3	2	406,801	428,485	417,208
Osce — Vienna	3	3	455,567	459,195	434,483
Oslo	3	2	715,292	787,891	634,870
Ottawa	4	3	658,038	605,680	700,330
Paris	12	10	1,867,828	1,852,135	1,804,602
Prague	6	2	524,173	573,544	604,233
Pretoria	8.5	4	1,407,145	1,318,279	968,255
Ramallah	4	2	419,099	373,828	286,792
Riga	3	2	437,135	438,808	372,586
Riyadh	8	2	404,299	386,430	547,777
Rome	7.8	5	1,292,690	1,270,120	1,202,705
San Francisco	4	2	500,358	628,525	417,187
Seoul	4	2	643,540	767,822	438,633
Shanghai	4	3	512,507	466,888	511,801
Singapore	4	3	913,131	865,908	805,922
Sofia	4	2	617,814	452,737	425,518
Stockholm	4	2	458,461	426,780	435,176
Strasbourg	3	3	523,150	454,730	439,469
Sydney	3	2	546,538	511,344	489,353
Tallinn	3	2	445,663	426,396	352,791
Tehran	4	2	315,881	361,419	347,641
Tel Aviv	4	2	666,237	574,527	737,733
The Hague	5	4	1,066,280	1,079,734	949,973
Tokyo	8	3	1,543,374	1,604,708	**2,079,774
Valletta	2	1	369,535	329,452	330,122
Vienna	5	3	677,684	664,055	633,729
Vilnius	3	2	677,347	545,639	452,692
Warsaw	4.4	4	909,879	996,352	713,657
Washington DC	8	12	1,540,392	1,268,050	1,250,786
Total	***356.2	386	61,642,638	62,088,126	57,310,102

*Operating costs for PMUN New York in 2008 reflects rent costs paid in advance for 2009 (which achieved significant savings).

**Operating costs for Embassy Toyko in 2009 reflects rent costs paid in advance for 2010 (which achieved significant savings).

***The total figure for locally employed staff includes staff employed directly by the Department of Foreign Affairs and also staff who are employed through agencies either privately or state run. For example in Embassy Beijing, 12 local staff are provided by the Chinese Diplomatic Service Bureau who is their direct employer.