Ireland’s IGC fixer

Date: 27/06/1996

AS THE most senior official in Ireland's department of foreign affairs, Noel Dorr played a key behind-the-scenes role in the final stages of the negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty.

Yet few realise how crucial his contribution was. It was to be expected that Dorr would bring his finely-honed diplomatic skills to the search for a successful conclusion to the complex negotiations.

But, more importantly and unexpectedly, he was also responsible for ensuring that the Irish delegation remained in touch with fast-moving parliamentary events back home.

A computer buff, Dorr had mastered the new technology more competently than any of his colleagues and was the only one able to establish the computer link needed to ensure that Dublin was kept fully briefed and up to date on the latest state of play in the negotiations.

“I remember someone coming into the delegation's rooms and asking who the workman was trying to connect the modem, only to be told that the person was in fact the secretary of the department of foreign affairs,” recalls one of Dorr's colleagues.

Now, some four and a half years later, Dorr is once again set to play a key role in the life of the Maastricht Treaty. Next Monday (1 July), he will begin a six-month stint as chairman of the Intergovernmental Conference group negotiating changes to the Treaty on European Union.

It is not a role the 62-year-old Dorr, with his youthful, boyish looks, could have expected when he officially retired last year. Nor did his foreign affairs colleagues believe they would see him roaming the corridors of their Iveagh House headquarters in Dublin again so soon.

But Dorr is back in the thick of things after accepting an invitation from Irish Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Dick Spring to be his country's representative at the Intergovernmental Conference.

Despite his highly-distinguished career in the Irish foreign service, a cursory glance at Dorr's postings would suggest that he is a relative stranger to Brussels.

Amid the multilateral complexities of the United Nations and the bilateral conundrum of Anglo-Irish relations, there is just one brief reference to a

two-year posting as a young official to Brussels a decade before Ireland joined the Union.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Dorr is unversed in Union business. His close contacts with the EU go back two decades and stem from his appointment as Irish political director in 1974. Within a year, Dorr was heavily involved in Ireland's first Union presidency and demonstrating, with a light touch, that he was not overawed by his more experienced colleagues.

His Belgian colleague at that time, Viscount Etienne Davignon, was one of the more loquacious members of the group chaired by Dorr. But the Irish diplomat would skilfully bring meetings to a harmonious end with the words: “So we are all agreed then, including Viscount Davignon.”

That presidency spell also revealed Dorr's distate for flying - an anxiety he masters with the help of sweets. After a particularly turbulent flight while accompanying Garret FitzGerald on the first visit by an Irish foreign minister to Moscow, Dorr was relieved to learn that all airports were closed and that the second stage of their trip in the Soviet Union might have to be cancelled.

He expressed his relief to the airforce officer seated next to him at dinner, only to be told to his horror: “Do not worry. We like you Irish and so we have arranged for the airport to be opened especially.”

With Aer Rianta operating Moscow's first duty-free shop and Shannon airport offering its facilities to the Soviet airline Aeroflot, Soviet airmen had good reason to hold Ireland in high regard.

The effort which the Irish government has made to cultivate senior American politicians and boost the traditional links between the two countries also stands Irish diplomats in good stead on the other side of the Atlantic.

Dorr, as secretary of the department of foreign affairs during Ireland's last EU presidency in 1990, accompanied a Union delegation to Washington.

Members of the group, which included the then Council of Ministers Secretary-General Niels Ersbøll, were distinctly surprised by the access they enjoyed, thanks to Dublin's influence, to a succession of senior American politicians - many of them, it must be said, with Irish links.

More recently, as head of Ireland's foreign service between 1987 and 1995, Dorr had an overview of the country's policy towards the Union, attending every EU summit during that period.

Without exception, colleagues pay tribute to Dorr's professional skills: his grasp of detail, his understanding of complex issues, his readiness to see both sides of an argument and his ability to draft concise texts.

Some have even suggested those skills might make him a better candidate for UN secretary-general - if the post were ever to come Ireland's way - than his country's high-profile President Mary Robinson.

“He has one of the finest minds I have ever met. In personality terms, he comes across as low key and diffident. He is no self-publicist, but in discussion he is extremely ferocious and has tremendous forensic skills. He has a core of steel,” says one colleague.

Dorr has also proved he can walk a tightrope.

He demonstrated this ability as Irish permanent representative to the UN in the early 1980s, when his country had a seat on the Security Council during the Falklands War. Dorr had some difficulty with the stance adopted by the Irish government and according to one diplomat “spent the time walking on egg shells”.

It was in New York that Dorr demonstrated to good effect the logical approach to matters technological which was later to help him feel so at home with computers. When the Irish embassy received a new, highly-sophisticated machine for putting its messages to Dublin in code, the instructions were missing. In a single weekend, Dorr had worked out how to operate it.

The other major axis of Dorr's diplomatic career has been his close involvement with Anglo-Irish relations. It began in 1970 when, as a foreign affairs press officer he handled Northern Irish issues. This led to a four-year spell as Irish ambassador to the UK in the mid- 1980s when negotiations were at their height.

“He is extraordinarily fair-minded and has a great ability to understand and take seriously on board the positions of people he is negotiating with. That is quite rare in a negotiator,” says a senior British diplomat who came to know Dorr well in those tense days.

As one who has been closely involved in various aspects of the new IGC chairman's career explains: “The thing about Noel is that whatever you are talking to him about at the time, whether it be the UN, Northern Ireland or the EU, he is tremendously enthusiastic and knowledgable about them.”

The same can be said about his outside interests. A voracious reader, he has had to rearrange his Dublin house to accommodate his ever-expanding library. His tastes range from history and philosophy to cosmology, and close Dorr watchers can detect when some of these passions appear in speeches uttered by prominent Irish politicians.

A fluent Irish speaker with a good command of French, Dorr has also been known to dabble in German and Russian and sometimes catches colleagues off balance with his fondness for Latin quotations.

He has spartan tastes, enjoying jogging and swimming, and thinks nothing of plunging into the cold waters of the Atlantic for a refreshing dip.

Although born in Limerick - at his mother's insistence - Dorr returned to his father's home town of Foxford in County Mayo within a few days of his birth and remains proud of his Mayo roots. In 1982, he was voted Mayo Man of the Year.

It is a tribute to his personality and diplomatic skills that he has earned the respect of politicians as different in personality as two former Irish Prime Ministers, Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey.

Explaining this ability to strike a close rapport with senior ministers, one Irish diplomat comments: “He has this ability to conceptualise an issue. Where others might flounder, he sees the essence of a problem and can present it to politicians in a way which is helpful to them.”

With those skills, Dorr is well equipped to negotiate the IGC through what are likely to become increasingly stormy waters over the next six months.