'Embassies key to job creation'

Minister of State Ciaran Cannon, has called on the Government to focus on the considerable job creation capacity of Ireland’s global network of embassies, which should be harnessed to help along the road to recovery.

The Galway East Deputy went on to say that the closure of the country’s embassy in the Vatican was “never about anything other than simple economics”, and that now is the time to look at where best to allocate scarce resources for maximum impact to drive job creation in Ireland.

“The population of the Vatican is approximately 1,000. At a time of very limited resources, it is not sustainable to maintain an expensive embassy presence there when we already have an ambassador in Rome and we have no presence in parts of the globe that are experiencing massive economic growth.

“I was fortunate enough to be able to visit our embassies in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore recently. In both of these locations, we have adopted the ‘Ireland House’ model where the Ambassador, Enterprise Ireland and the IDA all work very effectively together under one roof with the sole aim of securing more business and job creation opportunities for Ireland. This is the model we should be pursuing in every location across our embassy network.”

Deputy Cannon continued to say that the focus should now be on the potential of emerging markets such as China and Indonesia and highlighted a need for a re-evealuation of all current embassies.

“The IMF recently announced that it expects 80 per cent of global GDP growth over the next year to occur in emerging markets, with China’s contribution set to increase from eight per cent in the 1980s to an average of 31 per cent for 2010-13. The BRIC countries (China, Russia, India and China) are the places where we need a strong Irish presence. Now is the time to ask whether or not it is justifiable to have a full embassy in Malta, an island in the Mediterranean with a population of 430,000 people, while we have no embassy in Indonesia, a country with a population of 240 million, and a rapidly growing economy.

“We must give consideration as to whether we really need full embassies in Luxembourg or the Baltic states, while we have no embassy presence in many regions in Asia, such as Thailand which has a population of 70 million or Mumbai, which is the fourth most populous city in the world, with a population of 20 million. It is time for an in depth appraisal of our embassy presence across the globe and a reallocation of these valuable resources to areas where they can really make a difference to Ireland as we embark on the road to recovery.”