Sweden shuts its embassy, but the Philippines still flies the flag

The Swedish embassy in Ireland is closing after 65 years, while the Philippines embassy celebrates its first year here. How do the embassy staff feel? asks KATE HOLMQUIST

HER FIRST CHILDwas born a year ago in Dublin, she has bonded with other parents, many of them Irish, and she loves the laid-back atmosphere of a city she would have liked to have called home for longer. Maria Cramer, deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Sweden, is sorry to leave – and a bit surprised, having expected to spend a few years in Ireland with her Mexican husband. Breastfeeding and caring for a baby has prevented her from enjoying Guinness and travelling outside Dublin, but she plans to return on holiday.

What will she miss? “When you travel as a diplomat you can’t focus on what you miss. You have to focus on the new posting and you have to take pleasure in enjoying the new flavours of where you happen to be. I will look forward to the Margaritas I can have in Mexico, on my next posting,” she says.

Sweden, 65 years after it agreed to become diplomatic partner of a relatively new Irish State, is closing its embassy in Dublin. But Ireland isn’t going to lose the Swedes. Two thousand continue to live here, among them Swedish embassy intern Eva Wedenberg, who arrived in Dublin five months ago. This Erasmus scholar met her Spanish boyfriend in Dublin and intends to return next January, when her university studies are finished, to find a job and live in Dublin permanently.

Also planning to stay in Ireland is Swedish citizen Lena Strom, visa officer and committed hill-walker, who is going to retire in Ireland having “gone native” after more than two decades working with the Swedish embassy.

The Swedish ambassador, Claes Ljungdahl, says that his only regret on returning to Stockholm after three and a half years is that he should have seen more of Ireland outside Dublin, apart from golf courses. He has dogs, and, unlike in Sweden, dogs aren’t welcome in Irish hotels, he says.

The four Swedes working in the embassy will officially be saying goodbye this Monday at a barbecue with Swedish jazz at their unique Swedish-designed Dublin 4 residence, which will have a sale price of €3 million when it is put on the market in the autumn.

The Philippines, meanwhile, is today celebrating its embassy’s first year in Ireland with a sing-along concert in St Anne’s Park led by singing stars flown in from the Philippines.

The opening of a new embassy from Asia, while Sweden with its long tradition of Irish relations closes, shows that the world’s economic and social power points are shifting, and with it Ireland’s role. Ireland is the first EU state to see its Swedish Embassy close. Ljungdahl says that it’s “nothing personal”.

The decision was the result of a Swedish foreign ministry report, published last July, reassessing its responsibilities on the world stage in the context of value for money. With 100 expensive missions abroad, Sweden decided that developing countries and the Baltic states were priorities. When looking at how to get the most from its investment, Sweden decided that because Ireland is part of the EU, where member states are meeting constantly, “this framework could be used more effectively”.

SWEDEN AND IRELANDdisagree on the common agricultural policy, with Sweden opposing subsidies and supporting a free market, but this isn't the reason that Sweden is going, Ljungdahl says, and nor is Ireland's collapsed economy. Human rights, UN peacekeeping, folklore, music and culture should continue to be common ground for the two countries, says the ambassador, whose own father was a part of the Swedish delegation in 1945 that met representatives of the relatively new Irish State and answered the call to open diplomatic relations.

Ireland is a popular destination for young Swedish travellers, although few Irish visit Sweden, he adds.

Swedish embassies in Dakar, Ljubljana, Luxemborg and Sofia are also closing, while Sweden is strengthening its diplomatic presence in Mali, Moldova, Rwanda, Cambodia, Kosovo, Georgia and Albania.

As the Swedes say goodbye, the Filipinos are eager to become involved in Irish life from their base in Dublin’s Docklands, which is “the hip and happening place”, say embassy staff. So where does Joycelyn Roxas, administrative officer and one of a staff of five at the new embassy, do her shopping as a Dublin resident after years posted in Philadelphia, New South Wales and Honolulu? “London,” she answers, with a glimpse of a smile. The Dundrum shopping centre is the size of a single department store in one of Manila’s mega-malls, making Dublin feel like a “small city”, explains Hjayceelyn Quintana, consul general. “Manila is very cosmopolitan,” she says. Influences there are a combination of Japanese, Spanish (Spain colonised the Philippines for 400 years) and American. Is Dublin cosmopolitan? “I’m trying to determine that myself. What makes a city cosmopolitan anyway? Is it the food? The arts? Social activities? My aim would be to share our culture. It’s an appreciation of different things that makes a city cosmopolitan.”

Sweden may see Ireland as part of the European club, but for the Philippines, which has 12,000 citizens living here, Ireland is an important link to Europe. The Filipino ambassador, Ariel Y Abadilla, wants to nurture links in medical education, technology and culture, while offering the Philippines as the ideal bridge between Ireland and China in what he calls the “Asian century”.

Ireland and the Philippines – which has a population of 93 million, 85 per cent of them Catholic – have a lot in common. The Irish focus on family is something that Filipinos share, although Filipinos prefer “videoki” rather than drinking in pubs. Nearly every Filipino home has a microphone permanently connected to the TV, says Quintana. Filipinos don’t drink much alcohol and prefer sharing “smorgasbords” of food, along with singing, in their own homes. A good night out is going to the movies – several nights a week. “We love Hollywood,” says Quintana.

Vanna Lim, the 23-year-old secretary to the ambassador, has a strong American accent, and says that Irish people don’t believe her when she says she is Filipino. A former actor and TV sports reporter, she has found a wide circle of friends in Dublin, some Irish and some from the diplomatic community. “Dublin is much smaller than Manila, you can feel at home a lot quicker,” she says. “The Irish talk a lot, which is good when you just want to listen and haven’t anything to say.”

Dublin, being small and less cosmopolitan, raised some challenges for ambassador Abadilla. When he was asked to open his country’s first embassy in Ireland, after a lifetime living mostly in the US, he had to leave his family behind. His wife and Ivy League-educated daughters decided to stay in New York because they prefer the shopping and cultural life there, he says. His son, an IT expert, decided to remain in Honolulu, Abadilla’s last posting.

When Abadilla’s friends heard he was leaving sunny and hot Honolulu for cool and rainy Dublin, they asked him what he’d done to deserve it, the ambassador says jokingly, in the way of a man who likes a good laugh. “We have a lot of similarities with Irish people, we have a quick and easy way of smiling and making friends.”

ABADILLA LOOKED ATDublin 4, Dalkey and Killiney when seeking an ambassadorial home, but chose to live in Malahide. He thinks he might be the first ambassador to live there and has been made an honorary member of Malahide Golf Club.

Like a true diplomat, he seems to enjoy the differences he has found in Dublin and sees Ireland’s economic downturn as temporary. The Asian world experienced the same doldrums 10 years ago and rose out of it, which is why the Philippines can afford an embassy in Dublin now.

“We and the Irish have a lot in common: our religion, our hard-working ethos, our diasporas, our sense of humour . . . our people have the same qualities. We both look out for opportunities to advance ourselves in economic terms and in personal wellbeing.”

Abadilla wants to put on a play about the Philippines’ hero, poet Jose Rizale and his great love, the Irishwoman Josephine Bracken, from Co Offaly. Could there possibly be an Obama connection? “Believe me, we’re working on it,” says the ambassador’s right-hand woman, Quintana, with a curiously straight-faced and familiar sense of humour.