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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2015
On a plane leaving Baidoa refugee camp in Somalia in late 1992, an Arab doctor offered John O'Shea, head of the relief agency Goal, a glimpse of how the Irish were viewed in that civil war-ravaged state. ‘Ah, Ireland’, he remarked on learning of O'Shea's country of origin, ‘the caring nation’. He had reason to be complimentary. In addition to the aid agencies and aid workers involved in the ongoing relief effort, Somalia had recently hosted two highprofile visitors from the Irish state. In August 1992 the minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, spent three days in the country to view at first-hand its escalating civil war. He was followed less than two months later by President Mary Robinson, whose arrival at Baidoa on 2 October marked the beginning of a tour – the first by a Western head of state – of the feeding stations and refugee camps that provided succour to those displaced by the conflict.
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22 Irish Times, 28 Aug. 1982.
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24 Irish Times, 18 Apr. 1974.
25 ‘Address by the minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Charles J. Haughey, at the inauguration of Gorta, the Freedom from Hunger Council of Ireland, at the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin, on Monday, 8th November, 1965’ (N.A.I. DFA 2001/43/1156).
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43 Concern news, spring 1982.
44 ‘Mr Michael O’Kennedy, T.D., Minister of [sic] Foreign Affairs of Ireland, President of the Council of Ministers of the European Communities: address to the ASEAN foreign ministers, Bali, 1 July, 1979’ (N.A.I. DFA 2009/120/1190).
45 Draft note by Noel Dorr, ‘Aid to Cambodia’, 8 Nov. 1979 (N.A.I. DFA 2009/120/ 1649).
46 Lyons to Murnaghan, 19 Dec. 1978 (N.A.I. DFA 2008/79/2877).
47 Irish Independent, 27 Oct. 1984.
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64 ‘Question of Irish attendance at an Informal Meeting on International Development Cooperation to be held in Copenhagen on 31st August 1977’ (N.A.I. DFA 2008/79/2893).
65 A.C.D.C., The development co-operation policies of the European Community and the contribution of Ireland to those policies (Dublin, 1988), pp 19–20.
66 This observation is based on a number of interviews conducted by the author with former D.F.A. officials, aid workers, and representatives from the N.G.O. sector.
67 Howe, Ireland and empire, p. 155.Google Scholar
