The European Union: A Catalyst of Change for Ireland
Q&A with Daniel Mulhall, Ambassador of Ireland
Name: Daniel Mulhall | Age: 63 |Hometown: Waterford, Ireland Ambassador to the U.S. Since: September 2017
Tell us a little bit about your upbringing, and how you became interested in Foreign Service.
I was born and brought up in Waterford, Ireland. My family didn’t have any international experience; like a lot of Irish people of my generation, I was the first in my family to go to University — so I was breaking a mold, if you like. That’s not exceptional because that was the way it was in Ireland in the early 1970s.
As I was starting to look at potential career paths, my first instinct was that I would become an academic and teach at a university in Ireland — but I didn’t rule out working overseas either. I was about to head out to Australia on a scholarship to study at the Australian National University when the offer came in from our Department of Foreign Affairs. The ad in the papers was shown to me by a friend of mine at university who thought I would be an ideal person to take on such a role. I was initially skeptical. I didn’t really have much of an idea of what diplomats or embassies did at that time, so I was almost puzzled when I got through to the interview and then was offered the job.
At that time, I suppose I expected that I would stay in the Foreign Ministry for a few years and then go back into academia. But my first posting was a crucial moment for me, because I started to see the meaning of representing Ireland abroad. My first assignment was in India — which in those days was considered a very exotic and faraway place. Of course today, that is not the case; India is now a key part of the global economy and communications are so much easier.
During my three years in New Delhi, I felt cut off from home. It was an exciting but also a challenging experience. Today I suppose my colleagues there Skype with their families, are talking to friends on Facetime, reading the Irish newspapers on a daily basis, listening to Irish radio, and watching Irish television online. But when I was there, the “weekly bag” would arrive from Dublin, containing six copies of the previous weeks’ Irish Times. Sometimes, the news we received was ten days behind because the bag took 3–4 days to make it from Dublin to New Delhi. So it was a different world in those days, but it gave me a sense of the value of foreign service and the opportunities it provided to understand the world in a way you could never do by sitting at home or experiencing the world during overseas vacations.
Is the traveling your favorite part of your job?
Not really — I think the traveling is just part of the experience. The key thing about diplomacy is that it’s very different from regular travel. A tourist visits a country for 2–4 weeks and is clearly a visitor; while diplomats actually live in that place for a period of years. That’s a totally different experience, and gives you a different view of the world. You’re not seeing it from the incoming plane; you’re seeing it from the ground up. You live in the country for, in my case, 2–4 years, so you get a strong sense of those countries, how they function, what makes them tick, and therefore how they differ from our own countries.
You were stationed in Malaysia during the 2004 tsunami — would you mind describing to us what that was like?
This was definitely my most demanding moment as a diplomat — truly, nothing comes remotely close to it. I remember it vividly: I got a call on the morning of the 26th of December from our Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin because they had seen the media reports about the tsunami. I was living in Kuala Lumpur at the time, and that was quite a ways inland — maybe 20 miles or so. Needless to say, it was never going to be impacted by the tsunami, and Malaysia as a state didn’t bear the brunt of the tsunami. There were victims in Malaysia, but it wasn’t the major country affected.
I got that call about midday, roughly 2–3 hours after the tsunami had struck. I was at home because it was the day after Christmas, and I dropped everything and went immediately to the office. I spent the rest of that day until midnight telephoning people that I knew in Northern Malaysia and Thailand to try to figure out what was happening on the ground.
The following day I took the first available flight to Phuket because by that time, it was established that the epicenter of the crisis was not going to be in Malaysia, but rather in Thailand — and specifically in Phuket. I knew Phuket to be a place where many Irish people traveled for holiday as well, so I went there and spent three weeks. I was on my own for the first four or five days and then a colleague came from Dublin, the consulate in Bangkok sent people down, and some Irish people located in Phuket helped out as well. Together, we tried to track down Irish citizens who were reported missing.
It was a traumatic time. We had to walk through open air morgues and had to look at things that nobody should ever have to look at. It was a bruising experience. I’ll never forget the things I saw and the stories I heard of people’s misfortunes or in some cases, their good fortune — because some people had escaped miraculously.
Outside of your current posting here in the United States, where else have you been stationed?
Germany, the UK, and in Brussels, where I was the EU press spokesman for the Irish government. I was also in Vienna for the CSCE, now called the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). I’ve had a good range of experiences. I am a European specialist I suppose, but I have done two postings in Asia and two in Britain, which gives me quite a diverse professional background — but my main expertise would be European Union affairs. Wherever I’ve been, I’ve tried to talk up the EU out of personal conviction, as well as out of professional responsibility.
What would you say is the most important thing the EU has ever done for Ireland?
For Ireland, it’s a single word: opportunity. The EU provided a space for Ireland to take opportunities that were not available to us before we joined. Prior to our membership of the European Union, we were far too dependent on the British market — we didn’t have sufficient diversity in our economic connections and therefore didn’t fully achieve the goals that we had when we became an independent country in 1922. The European Union provided us with multiple opportunities: access to wider markets around Europe, diversity of relationships, moving us away from the overwhelming impact of the British-Irish relationship. We’ve now diversified our international profile and have developed close relations with our European neighbors. And of course, the support from EU institutions was important for us at a time when we were seeking to equip ourselves to be a competitive, leading-edge European economy — which I believe we are today.
The EU was not the sole factor involved in Ireland’s transformation, but it certainly played an important part — and that’s what I value about EU membership most of all. You only have to look at simple figures to understand our EU experience: when we joined the European Union in 1973, our per capita wealth level was approximately 2/3 of the European average; now, although there are different ways of calculating national wealth, we’re certainly above the EU average. In 1973, we were by far the least developed of the then-nine members of the European Union; now, we are up with the rest of the more advanced countries in the European Union. We still have challenges and issues to deal with, but our country has been transformed in all sorts of ways, and the EU was one of the catalysts for that change.
What is the most important thing the EU has done for Europe?
It has been a cradle of peace and prosperity for 70 years — and that’s no small achievement. I am a historian by trade, and when I look back over the history of Europe, going back to the Roman Empire, I cannot think of another period when our part of the continent (the part that is the European Union), has been so peaceful for so long. Of course we had to cope with the great recession ten years ago, but for the last 70 years Europe has been a place of considerable prosperity as well. Peace and prosperity are sometimes discounted, but they are the fundamental building blocks of a civilized society.
During your time as Ambassador, is there anything you would like to see the EU achieve in the near future — or maybe in the long term?
The problem is that many people, who may understand their own country’s politics and governance structures, have great difficulty in coming to terms with the workings of the European Union. I think the challenge for the EU is to find ways to provide comprehensive knowledge of the way it works, and thus establish itself in the minds of its citizens as something that is vital for their future; as something that adds to, rather than subtracts from, the lives they live and the economic security and the prosperity they enjoy. Of course, the EU still has to do the right things, but it also has to find a way of engaging the population at large in this great enterprise, which objectively has made a huge difference to Europeans. That was the challenge 40 years ago, it was the challenge 30 years ago and 20 years ago, and today also. It has rarely been a more important goal than it is today to find a way to bring home the EU’s relevance to our peoples.
Shifting away from foreign diplomacy and the EU — what do you like most about living here in Washington, D.C.?
It’s a beautiful city, and a very convenient city in which to live. I can walk on weekends down to Georgetown, which is more like a very attractive village, but still part of the city of Washington. Meanwhile, from my home I am within easy reach of Maryland and Virginia. Then, of course, you have the attractions of the countryside around DC and the historical heritage that is here as well. It’s all quite impressive, and I couldn’t be happier living here.
Is there anything about you that most people don’t know?
About five years ago I discovered social media. At the time I was told I was too old for it, but I refused to accept that. So I boldly entered the Twittersphere, and now I tweet a poem every morning. I started doing this in 2015 for the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Irish poet, William Butler Yates. And it was so popular with people that I was asked if I would keep it going — which I was of course happy to do.
So every evening I now pull out a book from my bookshelf and find a nice poem from an Irish poet — from Swift in the 18th century to contemporary writers — that fits into the twitter framework, and then I tweet it the following morning. It gets a really good following. Most of my tweets are seen by between 2,000–5,000 and sometimes a poem will take off and be retweeted again and again and get significantly more coverage. One poem I tweeted last year was seen by 110,000 people! You can follow me @DanMulhall.
You claim to have been a sports fan growing up. Did you have a particular team you enjoyed watching?
Well, in those days it was my local football (soccer) team. I’m going back to the 1960s now when most people that I knew in Ireland didn’t know anything about football anywhere outside our own country. The League of Ireland was my great passion as a child and I supported my home team of Waterford. At that time they were the best team in Ireland — I think they won five league titles in the space of seven years. It was only really when I was in my teens that Irish people started to become enthusiastic of English football. It’s a strange paradox: if you watch a Premier League match on television today, you will see Irish flags and Irish tricolors in the stadium. It’s kind of endearing in a way to see that people feel that it’s appropriate to bring across the flag of a neighboring country to a match in England — and obviously, the British people have no problem with this. They think it’s normal too.
When I was about 12 or 13, all of my friends at school decided we would have to adopt an English team to support, because they were showing those games on the television. Believe it or not I chose Manchester City. This was unusual because most Irish people tend to favor the red side of Manchester (Manchester United). But I chose City because they wore blue shirts, and my team in Waterford also wore blue. For a long time they were underperformers — but now they’ve become the leading team.
We also have our own Irish Gaelic games. These are the most important and popular games in Ireland, as they are only played in Ireland. People are fanatical about them — and I am too. I subscribe to a service that allows me to watch the games of my home team, Waterford, wherever I am in the world. When they play, I will sit down and watch those games online. I love it.
We have rugby as well. Rugby is a game that is traditionally valued in Ireland because we have a single rugby team for the entire country, which means it brings people together from North and South — and from the different political traditions. Everyone in Ireland supports this national team, which plays in green and wears the shamrock as a crest. There were great celebrations this year when our team won the 6-Nations Grand Slam on St Patrick’s Day.
Currently, over 30 million people living in the U.S. identify as Irish-Americans. Is there anything you would like to share with them — and the rest of the country — about Ireland that they may not know?
I respect Irish-America hugely. I respect them because over the generations they have preserved this sense of an Irish identity. Now of course that identity cannot be exactly equivalent to an Irish identity because in most cases, Irish-Americans have been here in America for generations, and their sense of Irishness can at times diverge quite a lot from how we in Ireland see ourselves today. But just the fact that they still preserve a sense of Irishness is uplifting.
So my job as Ambassador is to respect Irish-Americans and value their sense of Irishness, but also to try to alert them to the development that has occurred in Ireland — both in terms of our economic fabric and our social outlook. The best illustration of that is the fact that today, Ireland (a country that for generations — centuries — has exported its people in significant numbers, in many cases to the United States) has 17% of its population born outside the country. This means that, in a way, Ireland has now become what America was for the Irish in the 19th century: it attracts people from the world who see Ireland as a place of opportunity, just as the Irish saw the United States in the 19th century.
It is therefore a constant effort on our part to try to get around the perceived notions that people have of our country which may be out of date — and not to jettison those, because they’re valuable as well. I often summarize this point by looking at “The Quiet Man,” that famous John Wayne film: today’s Ireland is of course not the Ireland depicted in “The Quiet Man,” but the scenery and many aspects of Ireland are still there. I therefore have no problem with people wanting to go to Ireland to see the landscape portrayed in this film, but I also need to encourage them to understand that there are many other dimensions to Ireland today.
For example, all 10 of the biggest digital companies in the world — Google, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so forth — they all have significant operations in Ireland. That is not the image of Ireland that many people would normally have, but that’s the reality! I think we have to combine this reality with the traditional images that people hold and work to produce a hybrid view that is more satisfactory. That’s the job of the embassy; to speak and explain Ireland to an American audience that is sympathetic and wants to know about Ireland, but may have a slightly dated image of Ireland in their minds and hearts.
The other thing I always like to talk up is the vibrancy of Irish culture; that we have a literary cultural heritage that is very strong, that we have a musical heritage in our own native traditions of music and dance that are very strong, and that we also have very strong contemporary culture through rock music, film, and modern musical forms. Some people may only think of Ireland as purely the fiddle and the Irish pub and traditional music, which is great, but there’s a lot more to Ireland than that — and again, it is part of my mission as ambassador to introduce Americans to those things. Hence my daily Irish poetry tweet, which shows a range of Irish poetry over the ages.
What advice would you give to young people today who are interested in a career in foreign service?
In my view, the most important thing for a diplomat or a person in foreign affairs to have is curiosity. Curiosity will get you a long way. I always think that, when I come to a new country, I come with a curious mind, trying to understand. I try to avoid coming in with any preconceived notions — which can be difficult — but I think that being open to experiences is what foreign services are looking for in recruits…and certainly what they should be looking for. People who are open and flexible. Diplomats are very high-caliber people, but they are not just judged on the basis of their academic qualifications; you need to have an openness, a curiosity, and a flexibility. You need a willingness to be thrown into a situation for which you could never have any training. Nobody ever told me how to cope in a tsunami. I was sent to Lesotho at 23 years old to run our embassy while our permanent person was on leave. At that young age, I was managing 150 people — most of whom were double my age, or more than that. And again, nobody taught me what to do. So as I said, you have to be flexible.
In a small service like ours, we cannot afford to have specialists. Everyone has to be a generalist. So I’ve been posted to India, to Austria, to Belgium, to Scotland, to Malaysia, to Germany, to Britain, and to the United States. We do not have enough missions to be specialists. It is a great opportunity really to do such a wide range of things in the course of your career and have so many diverse experiences — but you have to be curious, and you have to be flexible.
This story is part of the @EUintheUS “Ambassador Spotlight Series,” featuring in-depth, personal interviews with ambassadors from the European Union’s 28 Member States. Follow our publication and stay tuned for the next story.
