Retirement from DFA, farewell message

Dear colleagues, friends,

It is with a mix of reflection on my career and anticipation of new things ahead that I retire from the Department of Foreign Affairs. It has been a career of two halves. The first twenty years of my career focused on how to build peace amidst the fallout of the violence in Northern Ireland, as we dealt with collusion in murder and legacies of violence, community tensions around parades, and confidence in policing and the rule of law. I am proud to have written the Government’s Assessment of the New Material that overturned the Widgery Report on Bloody Sunday and established the Saville Inquiry in 1998. It was an honour to have served with such inspiring colleagues in Anglo-Irish Division and to have been a member of the Good Friday Agreement Talks Team.

My first posting to Washington in the early 1990s was an extension of the peace process as we engaged intensively with the Clinton Administration. At the Embassy, along with an dynamic coalition of Irish Americans and Irish political leaders, we helped Congressman Bruce Morrison pass his diversity visa programme whose exclusive 40% for Ireland provided most of the undocumented Irish with green cards.

The second half of my career included fascinating work setting up Irish Aid’s Rapid Response Unit and the Conflict Resolution Unit. There is an immeasurable pride in presenting credentials as an Irish Ambassador, which I had the honour to do in Seoul in 2009 and subsequently in Pyongyang, Tel Aviv, Ottawa, Jamaica, The Bahamas, and Antigua and Barbuda. Excursions to North Korea and Gaza, fieldwork in Pakistan, Timor-Leste, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and explorations of the Canadian Arctic made for adventures full of unforgettable people and places. 

Some of my generation were early adopters of social media as a powerful new diplomatic tool. Throughout my postings, I published blogs on what I discovered, mostly traces of the Irish and their influence, often forgotten, often profound. Like the key role of the Royal Ulster Rifles in the Korean War, the strange life of John Henry Patterson of Ballymahon, godfather of the Israeli Defence Forces, and the role of the Irish in Canada, from Irish lumber barons in colonial Canada to the design of the Canadian flag. Back at Iveagh House between 2015 and 2020, as Trade Director I worked very hard to create Team Ireland and took on the organisation of Ireland at Expo Dubai.

Countless people enriched my journeys, their willingness always quickening when they learned I was Irish. Our greatest resource overseas is our Diaspora, engagements with whom ranged from the poignant to the joyful. Our values-based foreign policy is an enduring strength too of our diplomatic influence, now more critical than ever. 

Throughout my career, Ireland was changing and changing fast. The Ireland in which I had grown up is gone, evolved into a society that is peaceful, prosperous, inclusive, and diverse. It has been the fortune of my generation of diplomats to tell that story overseas.

Closing out my diplomatic career as Ambassador to Canada was wonderful, a journey deep into its Irish heart. Keep an eye out for Fifty Irish Lives in Canada 1661-2017, due to be published later this year, which Prof Mark McGowan and I have edited. Along with Caroilin Callery of the National Famine Museum, last year we launched the Global Irish Famine Way in Newfoundland. It will extend the National Famine Way to Canada, the US, South Africa, and Australia. That and other projects on my radar will keep me busy.

To my colleagues in the Department, present and retired, I say heartfelt thanks for your mentorship, support, and friendship. The new generations of officials whom I have encountered assure that the proud aspiration to public service is undiminished. To each and every one of the Protocol team, it has been an absolute pleasure to work with you on my last stint at the Department.

The diplomatic life is inextricably personal, particularly so if you have met your wife or partner en poste, as I did in Washington. Two of our three children were born there. Throughout my diplomatic career, Mary has been my indispensable ally. She committed to our life together, giving up a career as a Legislative Assistant in Congress to Bruce Morrison and in the US Government, following me around the world, and embracing all the tasks that fall to the partner: organizing residences, catering events big and small, and putting herself out there as a public figure.

For the forbearance and love of my wife and children, I am more grateful than they can ever know. They turned a diplomatic journey into a life.

Best wishes,

Eamonn

eamonncmckee@yahoo.com

www.eamonncmckee.com