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EVERY YEAR, IRISH Government ministers, the Attorney General and the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil pack up their passports and disperse across the globe in mid-March to promote Ireland overseas for St Patrick’s Day.
And this year’s programme is larger than ever before.
All of Ireland’s 15 senior and 23 junior ministers will travel this year, with 40 representatives visiting cities across 50 countries.
As is now customary, Attorney General Rossa Fanning and Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy will also don their Irish caps and shamrocks for the occasion, in India and Los Angeles, respectively.
If you are anything like us, you will have a lot of questions about these St Patrick’s Day trips.
Who decides who goes where? What is it based on? Do the ministers get a say in where they go? What exactly will each Government representative be up to while they are away?
And how much of a part does politics play in all of this?
Reader, we’ve got you covered.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee holds responsibility for assigning the St Patrick’s Day postings, with the final list ultimately signed off by Cabinet.
The Journal understands each minister was asked to provide three preferences for where they would like to travel, with their own department officials feeding in with suggestions for locations most relevant to their briefs.
We’re told that itineraries are currently being fine-tuned by Irish embassy officials in the various cities, so for now, details of what each Government representative will be up to remain scant.
Officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs have stressed, however, that the overall programme this year will have a focus on establishing new international markets, given the heartbreak the current US administration is causing the EU.
But despite the official narrative, the publication of the list of postings earlier this week did lead to some raised eyebrows among officials in Government Buildings.
“Sometimes ministers can be a bit demanding about where they want to go, and it can cause friction,” one source in Government told us.
Rumours have swirled about some ministers being better looked after than others, and there were a couple of green-eyed monsters among the Fianna Fáil ranks in particular.
Specifically, a few eyebrows were raised at Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon being sent to San Francisco, a city not exactly synonymous with well, agriculture.
“Maybe it makes sense if we are planning on getting into oranges,” one Fianna Fáil source quipped.
But sources in the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Agriculture were quick to push back on this narrative, noting that Heydon’s time in San Francisco will coincide with a large agri-tech conference and will also encompass a trip to Silicon Valley, the home of many global technology companies.
Moreover, while some people we spoke to were keen to play up the connections between a minister’s brief and the location they are going to, others said this actually has very little to do with how locations are chosen.
“It’s all politics,” one well-placed source said.
An effort is made to cover all of Ireland’s biggest trade markets, with senior ministers posted to the most important cities in terms of trade, the source explained.
And although the focus of this year’s programme is on establishing new markets, the US still remains an important priority of the programme, with senior ministers tending to get prioritised for US locations.
“For junior ministers, it’s an even spread elsewhere. There’s no science to it,” the source said.
Asked about the party politics of it all, the same source said the Minister for Foreign Affairs tries to be “agnostic” on that front.
“Sometimes people aren’t happy. That’s always been the way with this,” they said.
One person who was rumoured to be unhappy this year was junior minister with responsibility for forestry, Michael Healy-Rae.
Healy-Rae was the designated survivor last year, the sole Government representative to not travel for the festivities. But this time around, he will have a jam-packed schedule, taking in engagements in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Multiple sources indicated that Healy-Rae was not best pleased with having to travel.
One source dubbed Healy-Rae “persona non grata” this year, saying he “pissed off the entire coalition over the Mercosur stuff.”
“He’s the closest you will get to someone getting a bad situation,” they said.
But sources close to the Independent Kerry TD dismissed this outright.
“There’s no truth to the Mercosur thing. He got asked if he wanted to travel and he said yes,” the source said.
It was also noted that Finland and Estonia align “perfectly” with the forestry brief, given that it is a cornerstone of both economies. The precedent is also already there, with the former minister to hold the brief, Pippa Hackett of the Greens, also visiting Finland, Estonia and Latvia when she held the role in 2023.
When the list of destinations was published earlier this week, it was initially presumed that because every minister and junior minister will be going somewhere, this year we would have no designated survivor.
But fear not!
Minister of State in the Department of Justice, Niall Collins, will be taking up the post.
Collins is rostered to travel to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE but won’t be going until April, when Ramadan has concluded.
And if you were worried about the trips being a jolly of sorts for the ministers and their staff, rest assured, they don’t see it that way.
As one ministerial adviser told us – the trips largely take place during the Dáil recess, when TDs typically have a bit of downtime.
“There’s lots of work involved, lots of late travel. It’s not even remotely a holiday. I don’t think the ministers view it that way either.”
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