It’d also be interesting to see how busy each one was – particularly in dealing with citizens.

Money well spent, maintaining our presence in the international community. Better than spending €50m on a computer voting system that never worked.

“The network also includes offices in Armagh and Belfast.”

Why do we need those? Sure they’re just up the road….

Pity the article doesn’t carry any information on the amount the embassies generate for Ireland by developing trade links in its host countries.

So what’s the point? Are we suggesting to scrap embassies?

This is very tabloid journalism, lately I am seeing more and more of these kind of sensationalist stories about how much the government is spending on this or that showing up on thejournal.ie. There does not appear to be any substance to this as a news story. Pointing out that the most expensive embassy is Brussels is not news, that seems common sense. It appears we are all meant to be shocked by the revelation Ireland Inc. costs money and I agree with @peter above, no mention of the good the embassies do.

Alan, Peter, Colin (and others);

First of all, thanks for your comments.

I just wanted to clarify why exactly this article is presented as it is: its sole source is a parliamentary question responded to by Eamon Gilmore, in his capacity as Minister for Foreign Affairs. It hasn’t been my intention to try and present these figures in any kind of sensationalist or tabloid style – the piece hasn’t tried to pillory any particular institution, or to take anybody to task for their spending (and having read back on it afterward, I don’t believe it does) – and the goal of the piece was simply to help publicise the details about quite how much is spent running Ireland’s embassies, etc., for the sake of public knowledge and in the interest of transparency.

Of course, without any commentary or guidance on value for money (which is a subjective quality anyway) they may not be as useful as they otherwise could be, but trying to examine the performance of the diplomatic corps isn’t something that can be quantified in a parliamentary question, or indeed by any single source: it would simply take a decent investigation and, more importantly, some time. Of course, this is something we’ll do our best to look into, but in the meantime the scope of this piece was simply to offer the financial data and not any kind of commentary, analysis, or otherwise.

Given the straightforward choice of posting the raw data about what embassies spend, or putting together a larger analysis piece on potential waste, any journalist’s choice would be the latter and mine is no different. In an online medium, of course, we’re given the chance to do both – so, in the meantime, there’s no reason for us not to at least share the raw information in the first place.

Thanks again for your comments – we always welcome feedback, positive or otherwise, about what we do and how we do it, and all of your thoughts/suggestions/anything else will – as always – be taken on board.

Why not have an Irish consulate in each of the other EU member states, and beyond the EU have shared EU embassies manned by bilingual corp diplomatique? They would report back to Brussels (or even a central shared-services centre in Ireland) where all queries pertaining to the EU member states can be dealt with at significant savings to all.

Right, but it says “The costs do not include the salaries paid to ambassadors or to other staff posted in those embassies, as those funds are paid directly from the Department of Foreign Affairs budget and not by the embassies.” So how much are they really costing??

Great suggestion Brian it’s a winner , are you MEP guys reading this !