As our public representatives put the finishing touches to their itineraries for the annual jamboree of self-debasement and hypocrisy that is the St Patrick’s Day exodus, they’ll be hoping that US president Donald Trump does what he does best, and hoovers up all the oxygen.
So long as he ensures public attention is transfixed by the inevitable row over whether Taoiseach Micheál Martin should be travelling to the White House – a debate that has raged every year Trump has been president, even though the only answers on the table seem to be “yes” or “hell yes” – then other questions might get overlooked.
Or one question might anyway: do we really need to send every single member of our grossly inflated Government off to far-flung corners of the world?
Whatever you might think about the morality or the embarrassment factor of it, there’s an unassailable economic logic behind the Taoiseach’s trip to Washington and Philadelphia, and Helen McEntee’s Boston deployment. Tánaiste Simon Harris will be handling the EU side of things in Paris and chumming it up with Keir Starmer in London. Sounds reasonable. Darragh O’Brien is off to Brazil and Hildegarde Naughton is ticking off Chile and Argentina, weeks after the crucial Mercosur trade deal. Makes some sense; let’s just hope no one remembers we voted against it. Jack Chambers, Christopher O’Sullivan and Neale Richmond are covering six countries in Africa under the “emerging markets” brief, while Richmond is also swinging by Jordan, a mere 10,000km from his primary destination of South Africa. Wait, what?
The further you go down the long schedule of visits, the less it looks like a vital part of the Government’s Action Plan on Market Diversification, and the more it starts to resemble a transition-year ski trip planned by a committee after one too many glühweins. Verona Murphy will have a splendid time in Los Angeles, as will Martin Heydon in San Francisco, but do we really need to send them both – not to mention the other six who are US-bound? What part of Charlie McConalogue’s brief as Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport with special responsibility for Sport and Postal Policy will he be pursuing in Thailand and Vietnam? Will anyone sleep better knowing that Michael Moynihan, Thomas Byrne and Michael Healy-Rae are rattling through 10 eastern European countries between them?
Alan Dillon has one of the longest job titles in the current Government – Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with special responsibility for Small Businesses and Retail and Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications with special responsibility for Circular Economy. But it’s not immediately clear what any of it has to do with Mexico and Guatemala. And there’s no doubt a very good strategy behind dispatching Attorney General Rossa Fanning to India – just don’t expect to hear the details.
In all, 40 representatives of the State will “carry Ireland’s message” to more than 50 countries worldwide. And just like that TY ski trip, the purpose is a bit vague beyond “it’s costing a lot so it’s bound to be good for them.”
The subtext is that this is about shoring up our fabled soft power. An internal Department of Foreign Affairs document, recently seen by Irish Times reporter Jack Power, sheds some light on the official rationale: Ireland’s history as a small, “helpful”, “non-threatening” and “non-colonial” State has opened doors, it claims, going on to praise “the interpersonal skill set of diplomats and officials”. It adds that the department’s ambassadors and officials should lean into “cultural diplomacy”. “In Singapore and the wider region, bands such as U2, The Corrs, The Cranberries, Westlife and Boyzone remain extremely popular,” it notes. No doubt officials in Singapore will look on Frank Feighan as a very decent substitute for Bono.
This year, though, the already-thin guff about how we “punch above our weight” has been stretched to breaking point. Is Ireland – with its reputation, unfair or otherwise, as a tax haven, a defence freeloader, a hotbed of anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiment which is nonetheless happy to keep taking US dollars – still seen anywhere as the harmless chatty neighbour just popping in for the craic and the tea? Anywhere other than in Ireland, that is?
Perhaps that’s the point. The real audience for the St Patrick’s Day mega-jolly isn’t actually the foreign dignitaries we are assured will be wowed by being in the same room as someone whose niece was in school with one of the Corrs. There may be a genuine shred of hope that we can charm our way through the current global geopolitical minefield. (In the case of Trump, calling him “Daddy” does seem to work wonders.) Which leaves the question of who is supposed to be taken in by the epic scale of this year’s display of Irish soft power. The answer, I fear, is us.
The people of Monaco might not be blown away by the prospect of a visit from Marian Harkin, but – or so the thinking seems to go – her constituents in Sligo-Leitrim will be impressed. Likewise, the citizens of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania might feel they could take or leave the presence of Michael Healy-Rae, but voters in Kerry will be reassured that all is right. And so on.
It’s time we let go of the fantasy of Ireland’s soft power sending a warm glow around the world, like the gentle hug of a Ronan Keating song. Those days are long gone. Attitudes to Ireland have hardened. Patience with our hypocrisy on defence is running out. The clock is ticking for our economic model.
Shipping the entire Government off to drink green beer and hum along to Zombie for St Patrick’s Day might offer us brief assurance that all is well, but it’s an expensive form of therapy.