Minute by Thomas J. Kiernan to William Warnock, Seán Nunan and Liam Cosgrave concerning the division of work in the Department of External Affairs and Partition

1. Establishments Officer Assistant Secretary,
2. Secretary,
3. Minister,

I understand that the Minister is considering devoting a good deal of attention to the Partition problem, and concentrating more administrative work on this subject within the Department, which heretofore has been confined mainly to the dissemination of propaganda for re-unification. (Dr. O’Brien has also cultivated contacts with Six County MPs and others).

This proposed shift in work brings Partition into the Political rather than the Information Section; and before any change of this kind, involving also personnel, is made, I have investigated the work of the sections under my direct control.

I found the Political Section engaged mainly on the preparation of memoranda concerning international events remote from any particular interest to any possible Irish foreign commitments. The section, itself vague as to its purpose, has not been able to give any kind of directioning to the Missions; and the majority of these have not reported for a long time on political affairs, while such reports as are received deal in general with detailed political movements in the foreign country where the mission is located and are to a large extent waste of time.

After my examination of the sections, and a general discussion-meeting attended by the counsellors of all the Department’s sections as well as by Mr. Warnock, I make the following suggestions which will enable the Partition business to be put in its proper Section and in its important perspective; and which incidentally relate to other suggested improvements in the work of the sections. I recommend that the Economic Section should be brought under the Assistant Secretary (Political) rather than under the Assistant Secretary (Establishment). Its main work, which is connected with OEEC and with Trade Agreements, brings it into more real association with the Political and International Organisations Sections than with the Establishments, Accounts, Consular and Legal sections.

The Information and Political Sections should be directly controlled by the same Counsellor. (As a temporary expedient, since Cultural Relations was without proper desk supervision, I brought it recently under the Information Section Counsellor. See below re Cultural Relations in the proposed set-up.)

The Information Section should confine its work to external relations. The extra work of importance which ought to be undertaken by the Information Section consists of:-

1. Preparation of a quarterly bulletin on our work in the Council of Europe and other international organisations. For this it will be briefed by the Economic and International Organisations Section.
2. Documents on Ireland. These are of great use to missions abroad, save a great deal of time in answering queries by journalists and others and need to be undertaken on a wider scale and with a greater sense of urgency. The main writing is done by other State Departments.
3. A Year Book. We are the only civilised country without one. There is a constant demand in missions abroad for this.

The Weekly Bulletin, if continued as a weekly, should not be hurried from week to week as if it contained hot news. It is substantially a feature bulletin. The subjects for main treatment should be planned six months ahead and submitted to the Assistant Secretary. It will save time and energy in the Section if there is not such urgency about getting it out every Thursday.

Consideration should now be given to issuing the Bulletin monthly instead of weekly, omitting the ‘briefs’ which are taken from the newspapers, and linking the material of the Bulletin more with our External Affairs interests. Heads of mission should be encouraged to contribute draft material. At present the Bulletin is a short magazine type of weekly which reflects little of external affairs interest. For a monthly bulletin, material specially supplied by Missions abroad would be useful.

The Information Section should control the Library. Incidentally, books should be kept in the library and not spread over different rooms.

The Protocol Section is under a Counsellor, which for prestige purposes is deemed advisable. I recommend that the administration of the Cultural Relations grant of £10,000 should be under the same counsellor and that the Protocol and Cultural Relations Sections should be under the direction of the Assistant Secretary (Political). Any difficulties the Protocol officer has, come normally under the heading of political.

It must be borne in mind that the Cultural Relations Section has the aid of a valuable body of unpaid workers in the Advisory Committee and that it has functioned so far with only First or Second Secretary supervision, until the recent provisional change.

The following is (A) existing lay-out of the Department; and (B) proposed lay-out.

It will be seen that I am linking the Council of Europe and the OEEC and other international organisations under the same Counsellor, but leaving the existing staffs; and that from what is now the Economic Section, I am taking Commercial work, i.e. trade exhibitions, trade enquiries, and putting this under the Counsellor who now does Accounts and Establishments and Economic. This means that the Counsellor in charge of Council of Europe and OEEC will handle only work relating to international organisations and treaties.

I have linked Information and Political under one Counsellor, and strongly recommend a realistic look at the Weekly Bulletin work which at present takes up almost all the time of the Information Section, and which is issued to a large number of people in Britain, whose sympathies do not need to be encouraged by a free issue of material which they can get easily from magazine and book sources. A monthly bulletin would give time to develop other Information activities, which are bound to arise with a more definite national re-unification policy.

I suggest allocating temporarily to the Consular Section the Counsellor who, under my proposed scheme of organisation, becomes redundant. This will relieve the Legal Adviser who, owing to the transfers of Fay and Rynne, has not had an easy start.¹ Later this year, with Lisbon, Buenos Aires, and Strasbourg seeking Counsellors, the temporary Counsellor in the Consular section should be replaced by a First Secretary as at present. (The spare Third Secretary Power can be moved to the Council of Europe — OEEC section, or else to Protocol and Cultural which would then give its Second Secretary to International Organisations).