A group of civil servants were walking the grounds of Dublin Castle one Friday morning last June, imagining what it would be like to be a minister from another European government or one of their entourage.
Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Office of Public Works, other departments and several gardaí were taking part in a dry run to simulate the type of high-level meetings Ireland will host during its presidency of the council of the European Union in the second half of this year.
The walk-through envisaged where visiting EU ministers would be greeted and pick up their accreditation badges, and the route to the room where the Council of Ministers meeting would take place.
After a break for lunch, a group of more than 80 civil servants discussed Ireland’s preparations to take over the key EU deal-making role.
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“It’s a hugely important role, we have to be an honest broker and to get things done at an EU level,” Minister of State for Europe Thomas Byrne said this week. “You have to make the country look good. We have to give a good account of ourselves.”
Ireland will assume the EU presidency from the start of July until the end of the year.
The country in the rotating presidency is responsible for brokering compromises in Brussels between the EU’s 27 national governments. Ireland last held the presidency in 2013.
Irish officials in Brussels have spent months tracking what pieces of draft legislation – and the political fights they might generate – may land on the agenda during Ireland’s time in the role.
It will fall to Irish ministers and senior diplomats to defuse any rows and keep the wheels of the European political system moving.
[ Ireland’s EU presidency: How it works and what to expectOpens in new window ]
The Government’s in-tray will range from the big foreign policy questions of the day, such as the war in Ukraine and fraying transatlantic relationship, to the more mundane work of revising the EU’s framework on VAT.
One of the biggest tests will be the negotiations on the EU’s next seven-year budget. Securing agreement from all 27 national leaders on the size of the union’s future budget, and how those funds should be spent, will be a huge challenge.
Internal department briefings – written last September and seen by The Irish Times – advised it was “essential” that ministers attended EU-level council meetings in Brussels and elsewhere in the months before Ireland took on the presidency.
Ministers “need to be very visible” and vocal and should get to know their counterparts in other EU countries, the briefing stated.
Senior civil servants from Dublin have been familiarising themselves with the inner workings of the EU’s institutions.
The heads of every Government department travelled to Brussels for two days of briefings in late January, when they met senior officials in the European Commission.
The trip was a “good opportunity” to get a sense of what was expected from Ireland’s presidency, the State’s top civil servant, John Callinan, told the other department secretaries general in an email before the visit.
There are concerns at senior levels of Government that the EU presidency will pull a significant amount of bandwidth away from the Coalition’s domestic agenda.
Ministers are “extremely” anxious that progress on national legislation and other work does not slow to a crawl for the six-month period as civil servants become tied up with EU presidency business, one source said.
It is understood Callinan, secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach, told a recent meeting of the State’s most senior civil servants that work on the Government’s domestic priorities could not slow or take a back seat for the six months Ireland held the key EU role.
Others played down workload concerns.
“Not every Minister is going to have a major play in it, because their department competencies don’t have a big European dimension,” one junior minister said.
The Cabinet is to take stock of ongoing preparations for the EU role in the weeks ahead.
The Government plans to mark the start of its presidency by hosting EC president Ursula von der Leyen and the other 26 EU commissioners in Cork.
The day-to-day work of the presidency will largely take place in Brussels, but about 22 “council” meetings of EU ministers will be held in Ireland, as well as a summit of national leaders.
Officials involved in the logistical planning were keen to stage events in State-owned venues, to reduce both cost and the security headache.
Many of the high-level meetings will be held in Dublin Castle. About a quarter of them will be outside the capital, usually in the constituency of the minister set to chair it.
Cabinet has yet to formally sign off on the location of meetings.
It is understood Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee will chair a meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers in Wicklow. The location had been pencilled in for Tánaiste Simon Harris’s constituency before he moved to the Department of Finance, at which stage it was too late to change it. Harris will host EU finance ministers in Dublin Castle.
Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan is expected to chair a meeting of EU ministers on telecoms policy in his home county of Limerick. Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary will likely host one in Ballina in his home constituency of Mayo, with delegations flying into Knock airport.
A meeting of equality ministers is flagged as possibly being held in Tralee, Co Kerry, chaired by Minister for Children and Equality Norma Foley. A conference on artificial intelligence will take place in Dublin.
Planning has taken place for a meeting of tourism ministers in Westmeath, chaired by Minister for Enterprise and Tourism Peter Burke.
Agriculture ministers will likely be brought to Cork to discuss fisheries policy, where a visit to Kinsale will be arranged. Trips to the Guinness Storehouse feature in the provisional itineraries of some ministerial-level meetings in Dublin.
Ireland will separately stage a summit of 47 European leaders in November in the Convention Centre.
The European Political Community summit will bring together the EU’s 27 leaders and other European heads of state and government, including UK prime minister Keir Starmer and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
[ Ireland’s time in EU hot seat has potential for plenty of awkward momentsOpens in new window ]
“I have no doubt that Russia will try something ... so we just have to be prepared as best we can,” Byrne said.
He pointed out that rogue drones shut down Copenhagen airport several days before Denmark, a country with a very well equipped military, hosted the same summit of European leaders last year.
“We’re fixed very well. The gardaí overall are in charge of security, I think they’re going to do a very good job,” Byrne said.
A budget of €300 million has been put aside for the EU presidency.
Ministers are keen to avoid any perception that events are overly concentrated in Dublin. The Department of Foreign Affairs has decided to “pair” each county with an EU member state. Ambassadors from that state will visit Irish schools in the county and give talks in libraries and other venues.
France is paired with Cork, Greece with Dublin, Italy with Meath, Malta with Laois, Slovenia with Roscommon, Estonia with Galway and Hungary with Longford.
The other pairings were Kildare and Austria, Wicklow and Spain, Carlow and Luxembourg, Cavan and Latvia, Leitrim and Cyprus, Limerick and Germany, Clare and Croatia, Wexford and Slovakia, Donegal and Poland, Kerry and Czech Republic, Westmeath and Sweden, Portugal and Louth, Kilkenny and Romania, Netherlands and Mayo, Finland and Monaghan, Offaly and Belgium, Sligo and Lithuania, Waterford and Denmark, Tipperary and Bulgaria.
The idea set off diplomatic jostling over the pairings. Ireland’s embassies across Europe were asked to pitch their desired counties. Ambassadors were advised to put forward three picks, drawing on any historical or economic ties, diaspora connections or cultural links.
“In some cases it may not be possible to allocate the number one preference,” a department email to Irish ambassadors based across the 26 EU countries said.
The October 15th correspondence and other documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act.
“I was keen actually that Italy would be twinned with Meath because Navan is twinned with two Italian towns,” Byrne said of his own constituency.
Some department officials privately joked with Byrne that his personal ties to Italy – he married his wife in Rome – played a part.
“That wasn’t the deciding factor,” he said.
Internal documents show a separate cultural programme to “showcase Ireland’s artistic excellence” during the EU role was pared back in budget negotiations last autumn, from an initial Department of Culture ask for €6 million down to €4 million.
A note written by department officials said the cultural plans would have to be “reworked within available resources” given their budget was “30 per cent less than required”.
The programme includes a concert marking the start of the EU presidency in Brussels.
According to preliminary plans, this will offer “an immersive artistic experience that captures the depth and spirit of Irish traditional music and literature”.
