An Bord Snip: Foreign Affairs

Savings of €41.7m have been identified from the €800m current annual expenditure. 65 staff should be cut according to the proposals.

How it would be done:

Rationalisation of the overseas embassies by reducing their number from 75 to 55. Reduce pay grade of Ambassadors from Assistant Secretary level to principal officer level in all cases bar the five largest embassies – Washington, Beijing, New York, London and Paris.

In the event of ratification of Lisbon it recommends the creation of the ‘European External Access Service’. Details on what exactly this would cover are vague.

Officials assigned abroad are paid a Foreign Service Allowance that not currently taxable, subject to pension levy or the income levy. McCarthy recommends that the allowance be reduced by 12.5% resulting in savings of €1m.

Examine possible duplications in performance between bodies working on full implementation of Good Friday Agreement and semi-state non-commercial bodies.

Cease funding for European Movement in Ireland and Ireland United Nations Association thus saving €300, 000. Reduce allocation of funding to international organisations saving €5m.

Cease funding to the multilateral process of transforming the Chernobyl power plant into and environmentally safe system. Cesse funding the process of decommissioning Soviet-era nuclear reactors . Resultant Savings: €1m.

Reduce duplication of services provided overseas by the deptartment and Enterprise Ireland.

Extend timeframe to meet the UN Overseas Aid target limit of 0.7% of GDP from 2012 to 2015 while maintaining the current rate of 0.39% in the short term.

Removal of the Free Passport Scheme for Over-65s – saves €4.6m

–

While these measures are of little note in the larger scheme of things they are somewhat representative of the report as a whole.

Services which were formerly free will now cost citizens. Attempts are made to sort out duplication issues, public servants have their state-employment benefits sliced – generally, anything that can be hit, is hit. The jobs reduction is somewhat minimal however.

Interestingly, in an interview with RTÉ’s Prime Time last week UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he had received assurances that overseas aid will not be cut. One may assume Ban won’t be back for a few years and that cuts in overseas is not an explosive political issue – I reckon Fianna Fáil will look to implement the report’s proposals in that area, while the Greens may attempt to avoid them doing so.