THE NEXT IVEAGH
HOUSE MANDARIN
THE imminent retirement of
Department of Foreign Affairs
secretary general Dermot Gallagher
(DAG, as he is known among
mandarins) offers an opportunity to
foreign minister Micheál Martin and
Taoiseach Brian Cowen to impose their
own regime at the DFA.
Neither Martin nor Cowen are
especially enamoured with the notion that
the new general secretary should be either
DAG-lite, DAG-tarnished or Bertie’s pick.
As in most departments, there are always
factions and DAG’s supporters will go into
decline without him.
Such prejudices as Martin, in particular,
may have assumed on taking power last
April would have been encouraged by the
manner in which a news story broke in The
Irish Times last September concerning the
20,000 J1 visas that were agreed after
substantial talks in Washington between the
two governments.
That the story should
break just a few days before Martin was
due to sign the ‘historic, ground-breaking’
etc agreement was bad enough. That the
DFA should have been described, along
with DAG’s highly esteemed colleague,
Our Man in Washington, Ambassador
Michael Collins, as being the driving forces
behind successful negotiations to conclude
the agreement was even worse. But the fact
that the Minister for Foreign Affairs
received no mention at all was insufferable.
It did not go unnoticed that this particular
news story was broken by the same
journalist, Mark Hennessy, whose good
diplomatic sources had enabled him to offer
further insights into the rows about visas
for the undocumented Irish from the Bertie
Ahern/Collins perspective back in March.
Collins may now find that his prospects
of the top job will suffer as a result of his
association with the ancien regime. One to
watch is Brendan Scannell, currently
Ambassador to Japan. Another career
diplomat in the running is political director
in the Political Division, Rory
Montgomery.
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