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IRISH AMBASSADORS ARE and their families “often acting as janitors” in some embassy buildings, the Public Accounts Committee has heard, as it was revealed that 21 of 73 Irish embassies have full-time cooks.
Department of Foreign Affairs secretary general David Cooney has defended some €21.25 million in allowances paid to Irish officials serving in dozens of countries across the world. This works out on average at €66,000 per official.
Ambassadors, who are paid €140,000 annually, and diplomats are entitled to several different allowances including a local post allowance, a cost of living allowance and, in some cases, a rent allowance for accommodation, TDs on the Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.
The committee heard that all of these allowances have been reduced in recent years and that rent allowance and the payment of school fees for diplomats’ children must be applied for.
Labour TD Derek Nolan said that the €21.25 million spent in 2012 meant that on average around €66,000 was spent on 325 Irish officials serving abroad, on top of salaries.
Nolan said this was 28 per cent of the overall budget and queried whether officials serving abroad stood to benefit from getting a rental allowance if they also had a home in Ireland.
He claimed during the course of the hearing that he was being “scoffed at” but Cooney said he regretted if the TD felt that was the case. He insisted that it would be “untenable” to pursue each diplomat regarding their private circumstances.
“We’re often acting as janitors for embassies,” he said, saying that the upkeep of facilities can be taxing and there is “a lot of disruption involved” for diplomats, their spouses and their families.
He added: “The spouse gets nothing for being out there.”
Cooney insisted that he was happy to stand over system that compensates officials serving abroad so as that their income is not lower than if they had stayed in Dublin.
“There seems to be a sense of a degree of impropriety or excess around these allowances which I think is unfounded,” he said. “We are extremely scrupulous in terms of these allowances.”
He said that in the case of the 21 full-time cooks the total cost is €430,000, working out at around €20,000 per cook. He insisted that ambassadors pay for all the food they eat themselves and said the cooks are employed for the purposes of networking and entertaining.
“In my experience, it’s cheaper you get better value from having a live-in cook… you get more out of a full-time cook than you would if you had to hire people on an occasional basis,” Cooney explained.
He added that such supports are there for people “to do their job” saying there was a “a lot of disruption” involved in the life of an ambassador and that “it’s no picnic”.
“I’d rather be at home on a Saturday, with a beer, watching Match of the Day, than going out for some reception,” he said.
Later, PAC chairman John McGuinness told Cooney, who is leaving his post shortly, that he had “sold himself short” as embassy staff do “substantially more” than the senior official had explained to Nolan.
“You have to be there to experience it,” McGuinness said.
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I don’t think those figures are too crazy (€66,000 per official). It’s expensive for upkeep abroad and I don’t begrudge them the comforts of home – or some luxuries for being away from home. We should address the number of embassies though. Do we need 73?
I wonder what people working for IDA Enterprise Ireland and the Army get when they are posted overseas
I believe the Ambassadors residence in Canada had a make over of between 6 and7 million of poor Irish taxpayers money spent by the O P W . The Ambassador at the time Mr. Kelly was transferred to Qualla Lumpar blamed for this crazy spend,and replaced by a Mr. Bassett from the passport office.Mr Kelly was doing a great job in Canada at a very reasonable spend to the Irish taxpayer.
My other half works away on a cargo ship since he left school 30+ yrs ago & we get nothing except what he earns there the same as anyone who live at home & he can be away like the army for approx 3 mths or more.
But you live at home
Did he mention the tax free and duty free cars thhey can purchase every 3 years and that they can buy duty free goods?
Or that staff get very nice apartments to live in thanks to the taxpayers?
A live in cook is cheaper? How can that be? And who do they cook for all the time so?
In the equivalent situation, you would be living on the cargo ship, unpaid, for years at a stretch.
It’s not the same.
A live in cook is cheaper than hiring catering staff on a regular basis. Also easier for the diplomats to not have to think about hiring catering staff regularly.
That all seems reasonable enough. We should look at sharing an embassy or two though with someone like Denmark or Spain
As the spouse of an Irish diplomat….
The cost of living allowance is only payable in places where the cost of living is higher than in Dublin and not all diplomats get 140k per year. Most earn nowhere near that.
The package is not generous compared to other countries. We get one flight home every 18 months. Most countries offer at least one per year and more flexibility. For the Irish, if your partner’s family is from Japan and you’d like to visit there instead of Dublin, or put the equivalent cost of a flight to Dublin towards the flight to Japan and pay the difference, tough.
DFA does not have spousal working agreements with most countries. DFA does not offer any support, moral or financial, for spouses to retrain and Irish missions are so small there are no opportunities for spouses to work in the Embassy. Most countries offer something. There is no pension compensation because you cannot work. It is hard, financially and emotionally, to give up your job for your spouse. It is always a spouse. DFA does not recognise unmarried partners. There are no set working hours overseas. I have seen my spouse work 37 hours in a weekend, with no time off in lieu or overtime. It is expensive moving country every few years. From plug adapters to new crockery because the removal men dropped all your kitchen china. Again. And so on….
I won’t pretend this is the toughest job in the world. It’s not. We are not A&E nurses. But it isn’t quite as cushy as some people think.
You should write more ABC especially about the impact on your relationships with friends and family and the impact on kids having to up sticks and leave friends and the joys of trying to go shopping in a language you get virtually no training for.
Well, eg, you cannot care for elderly relatives when you are overseas. This puts the burden on family back home. You miss weddings and funerals. You cry every time but never show it because on the surface it’s an amazing lifestyle and you don’t want to seem ungrateful. Children tend to sink or swim. They see the world but don’t know where to call home. Finding schools again and again is exhausting. Grandparents miss sports days and nativity plays. Friendships, for everyone in the family, are hard to maintain over the years and distances. Spending 3 months getting through the local bureaucracy to buy a SIM card is a fascinating cultural experience the first time, but plain annoying by your 4th overseas tour. Language training is minimal. Medical care is of variable quality. You get no choice in your healthcare insurance provider, which you pay for. Family aren’t around to help after you give birth. You network, attend functions, host visitors in your home, do charity work etc to help your spouse and the Embassy.
All this aside, I want to be clear that it is a great honour and privilege to serve your country overseas. Ireland has some outstanding diplomats who have an outstanding reputation in the international community. They promote Ireland in the best possible light, provide first rate consular support (offering a lot more help than many countries), are never really off duty and work tirelessly to boost the irish economy. You should be proud of them!
Well said ABC
Were these ambitious and well remunerated people forced into these highly paid posts like those on jobsbridge schemes?
Did they know what they were signing up for? They are away from home but they are not emigrants – emigrants who have no paid for accomodation, travel home paid for, secure salaries and top ups and the opportunity to return home frequently – but left Ireland with little money and that in many cases was gifted or borrowed – I don’t think they have done too bad at all at all.
These people are never grateful for what they receive in life. They would not survive if theydid not have all the back up from Foreign Affairs. I speak from experience.
Sounds like bitter sour grapes CMac59 in fairness….
@ABC your service to Ireland and that of your spouse is greatly appreciated by me for one. Keep up the good work and make us look good!
Really sour cmac.. did you fail the third Secretary exams? A third sec gets 25k a year on starting and if posted to Freetown gets a bit of extra money to make sure they can live in a little comfort and pay for flights home. Exciting when you are a kid without dependents. But when you know that your spouse can have no career and your kids are getting screwed up with all the moving you cannot simply leave.. Irish companies won’t employ you and moving in the civil service is almost impossible. So no sometimes you don’t have a choice.
A well-argued case but the point is that relative to other Civil Servants, the DFA and Finance officials have not had to make the same sacrifices as others and this is patently unfair and unjust. The country is still effectively bust and all these allowances should have been severely curtailed. The excess capital spending in Canada was absolutely disgraceful. The caste of mandarins who inhabit these ‘hallowed’ Departments consider themselves superior to the rest of the Civil Service. When the crunch came we all know how useless Finance proved to be and how many jobs have Foreign Affairs brought to Ireland now that they’re supposed to be trade missions – which is a joke designed to cover for Gilmore opting for the easy life and swanning around the world at our expense. The consultants are still being employed at 300 an hour any time these Departments haven’t a clue how to deal with an issue – which is most of the time. When will somebody cry halt ???
If we forced Irish children growing up here to move to new home, change school, make new friends and say goodbye to old ones, surround themselves with new culture, language, people EVERY 4 years of their life till they turn 18 I’m pretty sure we’d be complaining about that too. But it’s exactly what happens if you’re in diplomatic corps.
For what our embassies contribute in trade agreements and representing Irish business abroad, worth it, I’d say. These articles never focus on how Ireland benefits, only what we spend.
In comparability terms 66k in allowances on average for an expat is well below normal
Normal morning moaners!
And they can’t do that on 140000? What is their salarie used for? Absolute disgrace. People are losing their homes and taxes up the Wahoo.
Now Neil ;-) if you had a job that involved traveling and incurred expenses such as food, petrol, hotel stay overs etc you wouldn’t be best pleased if the job told you to use your salary instead of receiving expenses would you? Same principle applies here. These people are representing Ireland and bringing in business, promoting our image.
No one forces them into these jobs I presume. So saying it’s tough work, difficult, etc. Doesn’t cut it for me. The pay is enough.
It good that you don’t make any decision so. Send someone to the other side if the world and say best if luck your on your own- stupid
Neil you obviously pay your employer for the raw materials and bills involved in your own job, right?
I mean, you expect people to cover the cost of employing them out if their own pockets so it stands to reason that you do it
They do what the Foreign minister tells them to do. Glorified messenger boys and girls.
Doubt if they seal many trade deals. If they do what is Burton doing on his trvaels and the cabinet when they travel.
And I thought it was all done by cabinet ministers when they go away for the 17th of March!
@Cmac59 jaysus you’re full of begrudgery aren’t you? The point of an ambassador is to portray gov policy regardless of personal opinion – you could hardly have ambassadors out promoting their own interests. Its people like you that make me despair about Ireland – criticise everything and everyone else – everyone else has something that i don’t have blah blah just fueling the stereotypical Irish begrudger image.
What line of work are you in?
Fine but don’t complain when Irish exports wither and die. You need government support to export in lots of countries.
Well it’s on top of a 140k salary. ..which seems a lot.
It is definitely a lot! None of them are forced in to this lifestyle – people seem to be making out that it is a truly horrendous job that requires a lot of money in compensation ! It is a great opportunity for these people to travel and enjoy other cultures and gain great economic and cultural experience and be paid handsomely for it too. Why do we accept that these people are special and deserve so much. YES it is excessive for our economy to support. Seems to be a lot of embassy staff commenting otherwise here this morning …
We Irish don’t take foreign policy seriously and for the most part look at Embassies as rescue shelters for idiots who get themselves into trouble on holidays. Most places in the world still only regard countries with Embassies in their ccapital as serious. We cannot do trade deals without Embassies. And unless we want our country to be represented abroad only by single people who do not have families you have to make sure those families are looked after. Have you any idea what an English language school costs in a place like Cairo? Or do you want the kids do go to the local koranic school?
Ahippo, you remind me of Padraig Flynn on the Late Late show in ’99 with your patronising comments.
If you feel patronized it is because you think like a child.
I love the reply. So smart! Seems like Elizabeth has no clue about how a foreign representation works.
Here’s a thought for those complaining Irish Diplomacy costs us too much. Especially those using Apple products. Try getting Apple to stop its tax avoidance measures via unlimited companies in Ireland. They paid only 36Million on over 7Billion profits last year.
This shouldn’t be an argument between ourselves, complaining about our diplomatic costs but rather the loopholes allowed in Irish business
Where does one apply to be an Ambadsador???
Nice work if you can get it…
The best bit is it is tax free
I’d say the ole diplomatic bags are fairly bulging with duty free. ;)
Yes there are special duty free shops where they can buy their tax free goods.They can also buy one tax free care every three years.
No they cannot.. things like duty free and tax free are decided by the government of the country you are sent to. Some let you buy the car tax free but you cannot sell it and if it is left hand drive you cannot bring it back home easily.
Plenty of sour faced begrudgers here as usual giving out that anyone, anywhere, has the audacity to get paid actual money for working.
Some folk won’t be happy until they’re the only person alive who earns a wage.
All political appointments €140000. No civil servant should be on that kind of money.
A 3rd secretary civil service = Administrative office can end up on 100,000 pa when posted abroad after a few years.None are over worked let me assure you of that.
Jaysus
When they are making over 180 grand they can well afford to employ someone to maintain the building. It’s the least they could do.
Do you hire maintenance crews for your employer’s buildings out of your own pocket?
Of course not, because that’s a stupid suggestion.
Ever need help abroad go to the Brits and they will fix you up.
Perhaps if Irish Ambassadors were actually treated properly (i.e. treated like Ambassadors were historically meant to be treated), we might get high-quality people to enter the Irish diplomatic service and represent our country abroad with great effectiveness and discernment.
Anyone can cook and if you want to learn how to make delicious meals simply let me know – frenchdiningschool
Having you own cook instead of hiring catering its a big saving. For example a foreign Embassy here can pay 2000 euros p/m for a cook/housekeeper and a catering could cost you 1500 for a dinner for 12 / 14 guest at a Residence. Embassies could host 2 of those events a month at least. If anything all 75 embassies should have a cook and save everyone money. No country in the world offers cheaper catering than a full time employee.
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