Dan Mulhall

Dan Mulhall is a retired Irish diplomat and a leading voice in Irish literature and history, whose career is defined by high-stakes diplomacy and a profound commitment to using culture as a tool of statecraft.

Diplomatic Arc (1978–2022)

Mulhall’s 44-year career at the Department of Foreign Affairs is often described as a "grand tour" of global influence:

• The Architect of Peace: In the 1990s, he was a key member of the Irish government's delegation during the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement, serving as the Department's Press Counsellor.
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• Ambassadorial "Heavy Hitter": He held the top four diplomatic posts in the Irish service:
  • Malaysia (2001–2005): His first ambassadorship, where he also managed the Irish response to the 2004 Asian Tsunami.
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  • Germany (2009–2013): Served during the height of the Eurozone crisis, working to stabilize Ireland’s reputation in the EU's economic heart.
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  • United Kingdom (2013–2017): A pivotal tenure that saw him navigate the fallout of the Brexit referendum and advocate for the protection of the peace process.
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  • United States (2017–2022): His final posting, where he managed relations during both the Trump and Biden administrations, famously using Yeats and Joyce to open doors in Washington D.C.
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The Literary Diplomat

Mulhall is unique for his deep integration of literature into his official duties. He famously tweeted a verse of W.B. Yeats every day during his time in Washington.

• Published Works: He is the author of Ulysses: A Reader's Odyssey (2022) and Pilgrim Soul: W.B. Yeats and the Ireland of his Time (2023).
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• Yeats Advocate: He serves as the Honorary President of the Yeats Society in Sligo.
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Current Life (2023–2026)

Since retiring from the diplomatic service in August 2022, Mulhall has transitioned into an academic and advisory "elder statesman" role:

• Academia: He is the Global Distinguished Professor of Irish Studies at New York University (NYU) and holds fellowships at Cambridge (Magdalene College) and Harvard (Institute of Politics).
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• Judging: In 2026, he is serving as a high-profile judge for the Dublin Literary Award, one of the world's most valuable prizes for fiction.
• Business Advisory: He acts as a consultant for the global law firm DLA Piper and the public affairs firm Rockwood, advising on transatlantic business relations.
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Perspective: Mulhall’s narrative is one of Public Diplomacy; he consistently proved that a country's "soft power"—its writers, poets, and history—could be just as effective in a negotiation room as its economic data.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Aaron Island Discs, a podcast series where we talk to Irish people from different walks of life as they reflect on their own journeys. Join me, Russell McDermott, as we explore the many aspects of Irishness and what it means to each of our guests through life's ups and downs. Dan Mulhall, welcome to Aaron Island Discs. Thank you. Now, first trick question is: have you been there and how did you travel there?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

I have been to the Iron Islands. It's quite a few years ago now. My wife, who's Australian, first uh came to uh Ireland. We visited the Aran Islands together and we traveled by ferry from Galway. I was quite keen that she always talked about this island off the coast of Perth in Western Australia called Rotteness Island. And uh I love going there. I've been there a number of times, and it's a great place to go. So I thought I've got to sort of expose her to the equivalent of Rottenness Island, which would be the Aran Islands. So we went to the Iron Islands and we were travelled by ferry from Galway and we spent the whole day there. We went out as far as Dunangus. That's a wonderful place, I believe. That's one of the great sites of Ireland is Dunangus. And we went out there and we came back, we had a few drinks in the pub, had a meal, and then traveled back that evening. Didn't stay overnight, but I must make sure that I uh book myself in for a night on the Iron Islands one of these days.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah. It's a remarkable place, isn't it? Vision isn't even.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah, well, you see, it's I mean, I I've always noticed that people that I met over the years who've been there, you know, Americans or British people or people from Germany, they always kind of see it as a highlight of their time in Ireland because I suppose it is a place where the you know the old kind of traditions have survived longer than elsewhere and so forth. And people people often talk about, you know, not just being in English war, but English man as well in here. So uh yeah, I mean it's a place that really does um tickle the fancy of Irish people and of people who come to Ireland as visitors who really love that immersion in a kind of a world that has uh maybe disappeared from other parts of the globe.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah, very true, yeah. And how'd your wife from WA think it looked? All right.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Oh, I I know she was very impressed with it. She says she loves Ireland. She's been, of course, in Ireland a long time now, and uh, you know, she's represented Ireland as part of our embassy team uh for you know many, many years as well. So yeah, no, she she would have fond memories of the Iron Islands, and in fact, I'd like to think it might go back there with my children and grandchildren who've never been there. They they would really, I think, appreciate the Iron Islands. I must see if I can find a big house where we can uh in the week, maybe sometime in the future.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

And how was the weather that day?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Was it a whole lot of it? It was good, it was good, it was good, it was summer, and it was a good it was a good day. It was a fine um sunny day, and I remember it was a pleasant um trip out to Dunangus, which we really enjoyed. Yeah. And how did you describe yourself then? Diplomat or writer? Yeah, I suppose I'm obviously an ex-diplomat, so I'm a retired ambassador, and uh, you know, when I'm in America, a lot of people are, you know, interested in the fact that I was ambassador there, so I kind of uh uh you know that's a big part of my my kind of um calling card in America. But generally I think of myself now as an author and a commentator. I try to be as active as I can on social media and media generally in trying to put out my ideas about Ireland and the world and to see whether my experience may be relevant to people who are um reading or listening to what I have to say.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

And that was what you wanted to do when you were studying in Waterford and Cork? No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

No, I it was a quite it was a sort of an accident. Uh it was a it was a benign and and uh happy accident, but I I remember I had no intention. I was actually headed for an academic career. I had uh won a PhD scholarship to go to the the uh Australian National University in Canberra.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

And I mean ironically, I ended up living in in Australia for a while and ended up marrying an Australian, but but that was my kind of ambition at that stage was to go to Canberra um and do a PhD in international relations. And uh and then foreign affairs came along. And I remember the day it happened, actually.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

A friend of mine somebody suggested you do the third sec exams, did they?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it was a guy that I knew. Uh he's sadly an out of seat, but uh he was a friend of mine at college, and uh we had little cubicles in the um science library in UCC. If you're a postgraduate tutor, you've got a little cubicle where you could store your books and so forth. And you know, he knocked on the door one day and said, Hey Dan, look at this ad for diplomats, third secretaries in the Department of Foreign Affairs. I said, Oh, not for me, that wouldn't be for me. And he said, No, no, no, read the description. This is you, this is absolutely you to an E. Well, I read it and thought, not really. I don't have French, I don't have German, I don't have any foreign languages, I only speak Irish and English. How am I going to be uh able to join the Department of Foreign Affairs? But he said, Look, he said, I'm sending away for for two forms, and I'm gonna make sure you fill it in. So I filled it in and I was called for the exam first of all and then for interview, and I ended up being offered the job and never ended up going to the Australian National University after all.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Well, I sat them in Madrid and I didn't get called, so you must have had the right answers.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Uh no, I mean, I mean, I look I I I I remember it as a as a moment in my life because I remember going into this big room in in Cork. There must have been 150 people there just doing the doing the exam. It wasn't just for for third seconds, it was also for for executive officer or for uh for administrative officer and tax inspector and so on. So there was but I mean it was a lot of people up for the exam, and then you know the interviews of course went on over a period of days, and eventually I got the offer, and uh I tried to defer the offer and spend a spend a year or two in Canberra, but it didn't work. They said no, you either join us now or you're gone. So I had to join. Because in those days, of course, you had to join before you were 26. Yeah, otherwise you couldn't join. Now you can join any time, but uh but in those days they had a fairly strict requirement. They're really looking for uh recent graduates rather than people with more experience.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah. What does being Irish mean to you? Because you have a you have an official view, you have your own personal view. Is Irishness something you carry on your chest important?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Absolutely, 100%. Yeah. I mean, look, I've always been passionately patriotic and so forth, and therefore I suppose in that sense the job in foreign affairs probably did suit me down to a T because um I mean I I I love the landscape of Ireland. I was fortunate that when I was uh when I was a boy, my my parents had this habit of, you know, they always took it away for for a holiday. And we traveled all over Ireland, you know, with caravans and and uh we we visited a lot of the country, you know. We used to go to the west of Ireland with Kerry, Cork, Galway, um, so forth. So I got to see the country at a young age and got to appreciate its uh you know its beauty. And then as I got older, I started to appreciate uh our language. Uh I'm an enthusiast for the Irish language, I started to appreciate our literature. I'm I'm currently honored president of the AIDS Society. I've written books on James Joyce and W.B. Yates, and I um I started to really enjoy our traditional music. I was part of that generation of Irish people that that discovered Irish music through Planksy and the body band and those. You know, it was a kind of a different version of the Irish musical tradition, which maybe predecessors of mine wouldn't have been able to access because in those days it might have been more, you know, the Kilfinora Cayley band, who I'm sure were very brilliant in their own way, but somehow Planksy offered a kind of a 1960s version of Irish traditional music, which really did kindle an interest in me. And uh I always enjoy now going, well, I'm in Ireland, going to a traditional music session is always one of my great treats.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Yeah, people forget Plancky. They played New C D in my time in 17, 79, and it was like a rock show. Yeah, it was, yeah. And I mean I remember that. Nobody knew Irish music in that kind of frame, really.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah, exactly, because I mean we'd only really heard, you know, we'd only really heard the the kind of well, when I was at school, we had K. Lee dancers, of course, at school in Waterford. And uh, you know, it was always kind of um, you know, pipe music. It was always just, you know, music played over the loudspeaker, which was very basically Cayley, you know, fairly basic, you know, like the California Cayley band and those that played a sort of a fairly fairly traditional version of uh of Irish music. But Blanksteen played it with long hair and played with different instruments, and it kind of excited me and my contemporaries at the time to think that Irish music had something in it that we hadn't that maybe our parents and grandparents hadn't appreciated. Yeah. So I don't think my parents would ever have been have any any interest in traditional music, whereas I do.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

And that's a thing that happened because of the influence of people like Blanksteet.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

It was amazing, and people forget that, yeah. And uh Waterford in your time, they should be a city boy or uh city, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

I know. I mean, I I I was I I recently gave a talk to the Guild of Agricultural Journalists out of the K Club. I confessed to them that I don't think I was ever on a farm until I was in my twenties. You know, I mean I just didn't have any I mean, you know, Waterford, okay, it was only say 50,000 people, but it felt like a very urban environment. Now I did, of course, as I said, I did travel the country with my parents for a couple of weeks in the summer, but I don't think my parents had any friends who were farmers. I don't think, you know, Waterford was a very urban place, even though it was only a small enough city. People people um didn't really have much um connection with the country. And I mean, okay, my school probably had three or four boys that came in from the surrounding areas who would have been from farming families, but it didn't really impact on it very much.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, no, uh I worked in Waterford, yeah. There is a city aspect to a town, and the rural part is totally different.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, yeah, and that, you know, I mean, like obviously, yeah, that that's that's a big thing in in Waterford that the city is is is is its own, you know. I mean, people from West Waterford don't feel the same, you know, they don't have the same kind of they even have different accents from people in Waterford City. Yeah, you know, it's very interesting, even though it's a relatively small county, 100,000 people, uh, there's a quite a big difference between the you know the western part of the county where people sound like there might be more from Cork.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah, when you cross that bridge, something happens.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

It does. It does, it does.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

And obviously, saying you've seen St. Patrick's Day in official capacities and in different countries, and what is it about Panny's Day that uh makes it so popular or unpopular in the Bendy?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Well, first of all, it's an enormous resource for Ireland, and every year I'm infuriated when I see people say, Oh, the cost of all of this is terrible. I mean, if you calculated the value of the publicity generated by St. Patrick's Day, you just couldn't put a price on it.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I mean, you know, every year the teacher comes to Washington when I was there and still doing it, of course, and you know, you get a full day devoted to Ireland. In Washington, DC, the most powerful city in the world, the president, the vice president, the speaker of the House, senior senators, administration people spend the whole day wearing their green ties and their green outfits to celebrate uh America's connection with Ireland. This is an invaluable resource. And people who last year thought said that Essex should boycott the White House, I I was completely appalled by that idea, and I will be again uh next year if people start banging the same drum once more. No, I mean this is a huge resource for Ireland, and it's just one of those things that we happen to have. It's an accent of history, but we should hang on to it for as long as we possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Do you think people who live in Ireland who haven't travelled have a different view of Irishness than people like myself or yourself who've lived abroad and have to have dealt with good things and bad things about our character? Probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

I mean, obviously, like I'm uh fairly pluralistic in the way I view Irishness, in that I I feel that anyone who's born in Ireland, regardless of their of their heritage, is Irish. I think that there are people around the world who identify in different ways with Ireland, Irish Americans, people in Australia, in Canada, and elsewhere. And I think those people belong to a wider Irish family that I'm happy to say is Irish. Now, because when when you know when when Joe Biden says I'm Irish, a lot of Irish people get kind of a bit annoyed. And say, You're up, you weren't born in Ireland. But it doesn't mean he was born in Ireland, it means that he's he's part of a community in America that calls itself Irish, even though they know that they and their parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents were born in America, but they still want to have that tag on them, which is I'm Irish. So the Irishness is a positive thing that Americans want to have on their CV and on their personal identity. And that's a big thing for us because it's the reason why nearly two million Americans come to Ireland every year. I think in 2019, before the pandemic, one in ten Americans who came to Europe came to Ireland. When you consider that we have maybe 1% of the population of the continent of Europe, that's an enormous resource for Ireland. You think about all the American firms that are in Ireland, they're not in Ireland because their chief executives are Irish, but the fact that their chief executives were Irish probably or had an Irish identity probably meant that they were at least prepared to come and have a look at Ireland. Yeah. And then they decided whether the Irish location suited their company or not. So, in all sorts of ways, the Irishness of Irish Americans benefits Ireland hugely. And for example, had it not been for Irish America, we could have ended up with a hard border on the island of Ireland because they weighed in very heavily to uh keep that border open. Uh, likewise, the peace process in the 1990s probably wouldn't have succeeded in the way it did without the influence of Irish Americans uh through Clinton and George Mitchell and so forth. And even if you go back to the 1910s and 20s, Irish America was a very big factor in the British government's calculation that they couldn't afford not to give some form of independence to Ireland.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Correct. And then we're talking about hard borders, you live through the the Brexit experience in England, UK. That was a totally different view of the world, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, I mean, look, I was I took the view at that time that I had to I couldn't be like other ambassadors, we simply said, zip the lip, say nothing. You know, I was out there every day on social media uh pointing out the implications of Brexit for British-Irish relations, the implications for Northern Ireland, the implications for the border on the island of Ireland, the implications for um British-Irish relations generally. Uh unfortunately, not enough people uh paid heed to what I had to say, but I decided it was my ob it was my obligation to make known those points of view because they weren't being aired by anybody else, and I felt that if I didn't do it, they would not get aired. And I so I was one of those who went out and actively uh spoke out on social media, on the media generally, uh at uh meetings, at town hall events and so forth, making the the argument that uh EU membership was a very good thing for British Irish relations, a very good thing for Ireland, a very good thing for Northern Ireland, and that Brexit would be a disruption on all of those fronts. And I that turned out to be um very true, of course, in that the Brexit thing has been a major um thorn uh in the side of British Irish relations for the last uh ten years. Now, happily we've now found a new equilibrium with the British, which is a good thing and which I hope will continue, depending on or you know, for as long as well, I hope it continues because it needs to continue, because we do need to have good relations with our nearest neighbour.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah, and now it was it was oversimplified for British people as well, what it really meant.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah, look, I mean, like in all the saving money or this and that.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

It was more than a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah, look, in all political campaigns, all political campaigns, uh the two sides put forward their their best you know, best foot forward, right? And unfortunately, the best foot of some of the people on the uh pro-Brexit side was to actually make false claims. For example, you know, the claim that Britain was paying, what is it, 200 and 300,000, 300 million euros a week to sorry, 300 million, whatever it was, it was 391 million pounds a week to to the EU budget, and that this money would all be saved. And even though that calculation was based on Britain getting no benefit at all, whereas in fact Britain gets huge got huge benefits from the EU budget. So, you know, they refused to acknowledge the fact that there was a growth payment, which is the one they quoted, but there was also a net payment, which is a lot, lot lower. So there was there was a certain there was there was a degree of dishonesty there, I have to confess. And uh, you know, but it was successfully put forward by people like Boris Johnson, who were very good communicators. I know Boris from my time in Brussels, so you know I know what he's like, I know how good he is at uh putting forward his own point of view, but that point of view was frankly dishonest because it refused to recognise a simple reality that the fig that the figure they were quoting was a ghost figure, whereas the the the relevant figure was a net figure, which was a a lot, a lot lower because Britain uh and all parts of Britain got significant benefit from EU membership.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

And there was no check coming back to them overnight.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

You know, there were payments made is a long-term thing, and they they were You know, I mean, look, I mean the way the EU budget works is that countries pay in to the budget. And then through the various policies of the Union, they get back benefits. So, for example, in the Irish case, we get back benefit from the common agricultural policy, we get back benefit from the EU structural funds. And that was the same for Britain, you know, even though Britain is not a big agricultural company, uh um um um country, uh nonetheless British farmers were getting significant payments from the common agricultural policy, which you have to take away from the contribution that Britain makes in order to get the next figure. Likewise, the poorer parts of Britain, like uh, you know, Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland and you know the north of England, they were getting significant funding from the European Union structural funds. So Britain was getting a lot back, and then of course it was getting the the the you know the less tangible but even more important benefit of having access to the European single market and benefiting their economy in that way.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yeah. Who was your Chancellor in when during your time in Germany?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Philip in Germany, oh, it was um uh it was Angela Merkel the whole time I was there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

And how was that totally different?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah, I mean look, Angela Merkel is, I think, a special politician in that she's not charismatic in the normal way.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Right. She's kind of understated in many ways, but she's a very astute operator, and she I think steered Germany through a difficult time because a lot of Germans, you know, weren't too convinced about the um you know the Euro and they didn't want to stand behind the Euro during the crisis of 2009-10-11, where we were exposed in a very big way. And Anglo-America was one of those who basically understood the importance of the Euro and the European Union to Germany, and therefore the need for Germany to put its back into it and not to shirk its responsibility. So even though we got a hard time from the Germans in some ways, you could say that we, you know, they they kind of um embraced us with tough love. Um nonetheless, you know, uh at the end of the day, the Euro survived and the Irish economy bounced back, and we managed to uh to deal with the this existential crisis. It could have uh could have ruined our economy for decades. And you have to give Angela Merkel some credit for that, in my view.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

And is she on is uh understanding of people, she's very cerebral, because you don't see a meaning look, she's a very she's she's a scientist, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

So I used to always think when she when she was um chancellor, you had Sarkozy who was the German president uh for part of my time anyway. And like I always felt that Merkel was the exact opposite of Sarkozy. Sarkozy got up in the morning, had a new idea, went off and and talked to the media about it, and then the whole system had to somehow you know create. Figure it out, he had to figure out what it meant. And a little bit like Donald Trump in some ways, you know, a very powerful figure who was instinctive and you know had strong views, and he sort of launched those views, and then the French system had to catch up with him somehow and had to make it all happen. Whereas I think in Merkel's case, she's the kind of person that would have had an idea and would have called a seminar in the Chancellery and brought in all the experts and teased it out over a long period of time and then ultimately come to a decision. So the exact opposite to the instinctive. Now, I happen to think that in politics you need a bit of instinct alongside your kind of technocratic uh you know uh uh abilities. I think ultimately Merkel did have the instinct that she understood literally that the European Union was more important to Germany than Euros and cents.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, very right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

How was that? And there was something more important than you know, um because a lot of Germans, I knew Germans who were appalled at what they saw is Germany bailing out the rest of Europe, fectual countries that uh you know couldn't manage their economies and were now coming to Germany cap in hand looking for Germany to bail them out. And of course, and I mean a lot of Germany.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

And in fairness, Dan, they they were fed up paying people East Germany, that no, they were.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

See, maybe I mean it might even be that the majority of Germans would have taken that view. Yeah. But the good thing was that Merkel, at least, and the people around her, understood that this was a bigger deal.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

And that that actually Germany is getting a very good deal from the EU in the sense that it has this massive market, it has good relations with all of its neighbors, its currency is much weaker than it would be if it was on its own. So, you know, there were also the reasons why. I mean, one German economist said to me once, you know, this is now now a while ago, this is back in the back in 2010 or there, but he said, look, Germany benefits from having a first world economy and and a second world currency. Because the currency, the value of the euro is set by the by the whole eurozone, not by Germany. Yeah. Whereas if Germany had had had the Deutschmark during the crisis, Deutschmark would have appreciated in value to the point where Germany would have had difficulty in being being competitive.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

And where do you live? In Bonn? No, I live in Berlin. Berlin. I live in Grunewald. All right. We have a whether we have a nice residence there. It's uh it's in the in nearly a lot of the embassies are there. It's a very nice part of Germany. It's it would have been part of the old West Berlin, and there's uh, you know, so no, it was a very nice place to live, and you know, the housing and the residents there is quite quite uh quite attractive and quite good. You know, it's a good place to live. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

No, I live two years in Stuttgart.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Um yeah, yeah. Stuttgart is is more you know, it's more southern, you know. Arabian and I mean yeah, I mean I mean I mean Berlin is very um trendy, cool. It is very northern and very eastern as well. I mean, you know, it's it's only it's very close to the Polish border after all. It's all about an hour's drive uh to get to places on the Polish border.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah. And your time in Washington then with uh the esteemed President Trump, how was that? It was fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

I mean a big F or fascin for small F just fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Just fascinating with small and big F's, yeah. I mean, you know, like first of all, America is an extraordinary country with the diversity of the American 50 states. Each of the 50 states could be a country in itself, you know, in in a in a kind of a you know, and if you think about Africa, for example, you know, that there are probably 40 countries in Africa. Well, there are 50 states in America, and some of them at least would be very viable as separate countries. In fact, probably most of them would be. So it's a it's a and it's got great diversity, you know, from the east coast to the middle and then you know, the north and the south, even climatically, and so forth. So it's a fantastic country to live in. Also, Americans are are extremely warm and and friendly. I mean, when they get to know you, they really do take you into their company and and they embrace you with a warm embrace. And, you know, we were, you know, we met a lot of fantastic people in America who were very generous to us, and you know, we whenever we went anywhere in America officially, the Irish community would rally round and you'd be uh you know, welcomed with you know with open arms and with great warmth. And that was something that that really impressed me greatly, you know. And and you know, people would invite us to their homes for weekends, to their you know, holiday homes and so forth. So, I mean, Americans are are very you know they're very fond of Ireland. I mean, some Irish people scoff at this and go, oh God, it's you know, it's cringe-making. No, it's not. This is part of American identity. Irish America is an American identity and it's an important identity for many Americans. It is a thing, and we have to accept that.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I mean, it just is.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

I mean, you know, I mean, I like I I knew people in America who could tell you where their great-great-great grandparents were born.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

I mean, they they could tell you the exact townland where they were born.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

I haven't, I mean, I'm sure most Irish people wouldn't. Beyond the grandparents, we probably can't easily go. I mean, if we if we want to, we can, we can trace it back. But I mean, it's not it's not a thing that most Irish people are that interested in doing.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah. And switching gears, Dan, resilience, is that something uh typically Irish, unique to Irish, or is just a a marketing thing? I think it's I think it's well if you look at history. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Right? Now we we won't always be like this because we you know we are now a prosperous, wealthy country in many ways, so you know, resilience is maybe associated with countries that are maybe on the way up in the world. But if you look back over it, I mean, you know, we managed to secure our independence in 1922, for our part of Ireland anyway, um, uh for the Free State, which was not an easy thing to do, and it required resilience on the part of the Irish people and those who led the struggle for independence. Uh, even if you look back to the famine of the 1840s, I mean, Ireland recovered pretty well actually. Now it was it was scarred by emigration, of course, but nonetheless, um, it was the country recovered from that cataclysmic um event. And, you know, by you know, I mean, by the 1880s, we had a very viable political movement demanding home rule for the country. And then we ended up having a having a cultural revival in the 1890s, which was probably world-class and and which which showed that Irish people could produce things that were of uh world-class caliber. Whereas, you know, we had been our country had been demeaned and and and and derided for so long and regarded as a kind of a backwater, and yet by the length by the end of the 19th century, only 40 years after the famine, we were producing literature and thinking of a world-class nature. So, and then if you look, if you go on further, if you look at the you know, the way in which Irish people, when they emigrated, like when the Irish emigrated to Britain, they were subjected to considerable discrimination, and yet they came through. So people like I remember meeting people in London who came over with nothing and ended up as very successful business people, many of them in the construction sector. Right. Likewise, in the States, if you look at the way in which the Irish lived in the the you know, the ghettos of New York and Philadelphia and Boston in the early years of mass Irish immigration to the United States, it was an incredibly demanding uh life that these people lived. And yet within a generation, you know, I I remember talking to a to uh to a Jewish American academic in New York who told me, she said, uh the Irish taught Jewish immigrants how to be American. Because by the first gener you know, by the second generation, those immigrants, their children, were teachers. And they were, you know, they had already moved up in the world after one generation. It's amazing. So that was the kind of resilience those people displayed. And even if you look into more recent history in Ireland, look at the way we you know we we bounced back from the uh from the financial crisis of 2009, 10, 11. To where we are now. To where we are now. Uh look at the way we you know we managed the whole COVID thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Pretty successfully. Our our death rates. I mean, we were maybe we we were over overzealous in the way we operated, but we we you know it saved lives, and people by and large accepted you know the rules that had to be followed, which were stringent and not very strong.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

That was remarkable, considering we we believe we're kind of a rebellious people, we actually were very cohesive during that expectation of the COVID restrictions without question.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

No, we were, we were, and and and and I mean I think it paid off in in you know in a big way. And even though in more recent times, you know, the the kind of impact of the war on Ukraine, we've managed to give refuge to 100,000 plus Ukrainians. Um and okay, it's caused a certain strain on the system and were stretched in many ways, but uh it it didn't uh it I mean it didn't cause a a kind of a an equivalent of reform UK to emerge from the uh from the weeds. Yeah. I know we mean I mean I mean and that may happen. I'm not I'm not I'm I'm not saying that we're uh you know virtuous beyond you know um and beyond the norm, but we are certainly I think a people that don't don't go for the you know for the easy option of of being bitter and uh and and discriminatory.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yeah, and that's why that's why I mean you know our like our politics now is is is is still pretty much middle of the road because although we I mean we have a left component, uh a lot of it is are people who would be, I would say, center left, you know, rather than you know, far left. Uh and on the right hand, uh on the right hand side of the spectrum, we really have relatively small pockets of of you know Farage like politics.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

And over the years, in all these. Well, I'm trying to say it won't change because you know what it would need is some some charismatic character might emerge in that particular category and might you know move things forward in a very uh dramatic way. But for the moment at least, people seem to be want to stick to to the middle ground rather than uh going for popular solutions that probably wouldn't work.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yeah, that's where we we probably participate in the middle ground, divide that up. Yeah. But over the years, you're when you're in the embassies, you want to see the type of people come to receptions over 30, 40 years change in different places. You know, type of embassy.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah, I mean I mean, I I certainly, and I think my predecessors as well certainly believed that we should open up the embassy to the widest possible range of uh of people. I remember an older person that I met at the embassy, uh, who'd been in Britain for maybe, I don't know, 60 years, 70 years maybe, was saying to me, you know, he said, When I first came here, we wouldn't have been welcome here. Yeah. This wasn't for us, you know. So I think I think the democratization of diplomacy has been a very good thing. And then most of my colleagues in the service, my contemporaries, are people like me that came from kind of ordinary Irish backgrounds, like we weren't we weren't born into a kind of privileged environment. If you go to other countries, you'll find people of kind of formerly aristocratic backgrounds tend to be overrepresented in those services. And uh, you know, in Britain, even like Oxford and Cambridge people are probably overrepresented in the uh British Foreign Service, and likewise in America the Ivy League tends to be dominant. So, you know, I think we're a much more democratic country from that point of view.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Yeah. Well, I remember when Ryanair first started, and the people used to fly to London and were what we called bow people, and now it's totally different demographic.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Yeah, I mean a friend of mine who's father, you know, emigrated to Britain in the 50s and the 40s, maybe, said to me, he said, you know, he said, my father's generation came to build Britain, yeah, and the current generation comes to design for you know, because you have this kind of um cuttery now of of young Irish people. I used to love meeting them at the embassy. There was this sort of uh the London Irish Business Group, and they were great because they were all working for the top companies in Britain and uh occupying prime positions in the you know in the British system, whereas the previous generations come over to you know to work as labourers, and I mean they did a good job and they you know they you know they made good lives for themselves and their families.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

It's more likely to beat them in Kilburn somewhere in above rather than in the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Whereas now the you know the Irish are very much part of the fabric of Britain, and you know, while there was a bit of xenophobia still, you know, in Britain, especially after Brexit, which stoked up the whole xenophobic um you know dimension there, I think by and large the Irish are now seen as a kind of a valuable um part of uh British society and not in any way alien or uh one to be resented.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

And a personal or iconic or high achievement moment that you have in your mind or the opposite, Dan. Anything stand out?

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah, I suppose my passion is for Irish history and literature. And I suppose being present in Belfast on the 10th of April 1998 for the signing of the Good Friday Agreement was about as iconic a moment as I could have expected to have in my career. So I look back on that with um pride and joy that I was there for that epic day when Ireland changed and I think British Irish relations changed permanently, and we're still living in the slitstream of that particular achievement.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Yeah, that must have been amazing uh to be.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

It was, you know, and I mean, you know, of course it was we were involved because we've been there since uh Monday, I think it was, and that happened on a Friday. So, you know, and I remember like on the Thursday night we didn't even go back to our accommodation. We just stayed there overnight, and we you know, we slept through the night. And I remember I think um, you know, waking up in the morning, you know, you know, in a chair beside the attorney general. So everyone had the same experience. And I remember going into the uh to have a shave in the uh you know in the bathroom. Um and I was standing beside Jerry Adams who was chipping his beard. So, you know, it was uh it it was a strange time. And then of course, by the time I got to leave, it was late at night because I didn't make the first flight back to Dublin. I was on the second one, and by the time the second one left, of course, it was after dark, and we had to travel out to Aldergrove with a uh with an extraordinary um motorcade of of military vehicles and outriders and armoured cars and so on protecting this uh you know this precious delegation. So by the time we got to the uh the airport, we felt well and truly relieved to be on our plane and back to Dublin.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

And a piece of music, Dan, that's travelled with you over the decades.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah, look, I mean, I remember 1974, I think it was no, no, 1919 um sixty-eight, it would have been. I was about thirteen or fourteen, and a friend of mine at school who had an older brother who was probably maybe 17, 18 at the time, he gave me, he he lent me Bob Dylan's greatest hits, right? And I avoided him for about a month to try and keep a hold of this record because I played it non-stop. We had a record player we just bought the Christmas before, my family, the first family record player, and I hogged the room where the record player was, and I listened to this disc, I suppose, four or five times a night for about a month.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

And it became ingrained in me, and I've been a Bob Dylan enthusiast ever since. Now, what it did for me was that it it showed that popular culture could have an intelligent strand to it, that it could have an intelligent feel to it. So as a literature enthusiast, I could really respond to someone who could wield words in the way that Bob Dylan could. And then when I was in America in 1974, I had a little pocket radio in my little little room in Kansas City at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, where I was staying with a friend of mine from UCC, a little pocket radio, and I listened every night to FM radio, and the music I loved then was Steely Dan. Steely Dan. Ricky Don't Lose That Number. And I and I still have all the Stevie Dan records here in my case beside me, and I play them on a fairly regular basis. And I also like now what's called Yacht Rock, which usually features Steely Dan along with uh Michael McDonald and people like that. So yeah, uh, those are my musical, those are my formative musical memories.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Michael used to sing backing vocals for some of their songs in the day, Stevie Dan. Oh he did, of course.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was one of their backing singers. Yeah, he was, yeah. No, no, that's true. In fact, I I I saw him recently and he's he's brilliant. Uh watching it about five years ago. He's got a wonderful voice and his performances are really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Did you see Bob Dylan this week in Dublin, did you?

SPEAKER_01 35:00

I didn't know, I didn't know. No, I mean I saw him in Boston there a couple of years ago. Uh so I've seen the current show, if you like. But I didn't, I wouldn't have if I'd been in Dublin on uh that day, I would have certainly gone along, but I wasn't, so I didn't see him. But I hope he may do one more farewell, another farewell tour would be quite nice on the show. A bit like Elton Joan keeps saying goodbye, yeah. He keeps saying goodbye. I mean, I mean I mean all these guys are extraordinary in the way they have, you know, the kind of stamina they have. I mean, he he knows like 150 concerts or more. I mean, it's amazing, really.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah, incredible. And poetry, I know you're you're you're fond of poetry, and it's something uh Seamus Heaney is your go-to word so. I think Yates and Heaney, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

I mean, I I I gave a talk recently at I mentioned it before, at the Guild of Agricultural Journalists at the K Club, and uh I they wanted me to talk about geopolitics. Yeah. So I talked about geopolitics using about six quotes from different Irish poets and writers. And in fact, I called the talk after a short a line from Sean O'Casey's play, Juno on the Peacock. If you remember that play, it's a wonderful play. Yeah, and Juno is a long-suffering wife of a rather feckless Captain Boyle, who uh uh was not actually Captain at all. He he he he travelled once on a ferry from Dublin to Liverpool, and after that he called himself Captain. And so Captain Boyle, anyway, comes back home and he's he's had a few drinks, a good few drinks, and he's with his pal, Joxer. And he's coming back into the house and he and he starts singing, Ireland sober is Ireland free. The irony of that is is extraordinary. And then he says, I'll tell you what, Joxar, the whole world's in a terrible state of chassis.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Chassis, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

And I said to the people there last week, I said, Look, I feel the word chassis is a better word than chaos to describe the state of the world at the moment, because chaos, at least you can kind of get your head around it. You can kind of you can this chaos theory after all. But but chassis is something else. And I feel the world has kind of has become kind of mispronounced, um, you know, misconstrued, and we need to get it back to some kind of organized chaos of the kind that's more normal in uh human history.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Will you come back and fix it all, William? Or have you had enough?

SPEAKER_01 37:08

No, I I mean I continue to write and think about Irish uh history, literature, and international relations. And in fact, the irony is that when you retire, you have more time to think about things than you had when you were working. Because when you're working, you have a job to do, and you can't sit around, you know, meditating on the state of the world. Maybe you should, but in my experience, you had to get the job done. That was the priority. And therefore, you didn't have much time to be mulling over the state of the world. But now that I'm retired, I have a bit more time to think about it. I have copies of the Foreign Affairs magazine here in front of me, the great American uh publications that I that I read on a regular basis and find that helpful to keep me in touch with things. And plus, I keep in contact with people across the across the world who are interested in these things and meet people whenever I can to talk about these issues. So yeah, I'm I'm still patently interested in in the whole international scene and and I want to contribute as much as I can to people's underunderstanding of it. Because I think in Ireland we we tend to be a little because we're an island country, we tend to be a little more insular. We don't have the kind of deep pocket of think tanks that you have in bigger countries. Uh we only have really one one international affairs think tank. So I like to contribute as much as I can to the you know to the sort of national debate on international issues.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

And when you look back at the journey you've travelled, are you surprised, amazed, or is it it it worked out as you expected?

SPEAKER_01 38:27

No, no, no. I I I am first of all, I I I'm amazed with how Ireland has developed. I wouldn't have ever really anticipated or expected we'd have gone so far in the way that we've journeyed as a country and the kind of transformation that's occurred in Irish uh society and Irish life. And all I can say is we should try and keep it up. I think we are facing some difficult choices now because the world is changing and and it's not as benign to us as it was maybe for the last 30, 40 years. So I'm amazed at that. I'm amazed also at my own personal journey because when I started in foreign affairs, I probably would have thought, well, if I end up as as ambassador anywhere, I'll be happy. Yeah. And uh I would have thought that you know, a small country somewhere would have been more likely to be my destiny. But I ended up as ambassador to Germany, uh, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And those were three posts that I wouldn't really have aspire to in at the start of my career, or even in the middle of my career. My career took off really, you know, the last 20 years when I started to um you know get the more demanding posts and managed to um to cope with them all reasonably well and then got other demanding posts in turn, which is the way it works really in any career.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Yeah. And are you optimistic about the future?

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Yeah, my glass is always half full.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

You're half full.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

I I I don't see the point of this relentless, you know, belly aching and running down of things. I mean, I've noticed this on you know, on X, which I know is not representative of anything, really.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

But you're very active on X. I'm surprised you're so active because the cancel is.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Yeah, because because I just feel that somebody has to be out there putting across what I regard as sane and sensible points of view because there's a lot of crazy people out there.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

No, I believe that's clear. I believe that's true. I'm I'm I'm very positive about X in that sense that if you contribute positive stuff, I've never had a better message back, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 40:17

No, no, no, no, no, no. No, the point is that I know there are a lot of people out there who are just there. They're not they're not active because they're not, they don't feel that they they want to get involved in rows with people on X. But I mean, because I mean, even though, okay, I might get if I put out something about defense, I might get 20 responses from people who are angry with me and calling me a warmonger. But this is yeah, but yeah, but my tweet will be seen by maybe 10,000 people. So a lot of these people are obviously being, they're obviously learning from what I'm telling them rather than being angry by it. So I just feel I have an obligation as a person with a certain knowledge and experience and with a following on X as well, that I have an obligation to just you know to remain out there, even though you you know you get terrible abuse from people. And I start getting abuse now more and more from people out there. But I can see that most of them are crazy people. And my my attitude is that I I'm happy to engage with them, I I do as much as I can. I can't do all of it because you can't respond to every uh message where you'd be 24 hours a day tied up with X. But I try to respond to people, but what I don't do is I will not engage with anybody who is using vile language. I just block them immediately, and I just don't care. I don't want them in my life, so I just blocked them. So when I do that, I I feel I'm I feel I'm still doing I'm still playing some kind of a a role that's worth playing.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Yeah, good. Any heany words you want to end on?

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yeah, I mean recently I I I've been drawing on uh a Yates poem that I didn't much uh use previously, which is uh from Meditations in Time of Civil War, about we have fed the heart on fantasies. The heart uh the heart's grown brutal from the fair, more substance in our enmities than in our love. And I think the world we have today is a bit like that, where the fantasies that we are being that that are being spread are the ones I mentioned, the ones that you find so much on social media. And they have made the heart brutal, and they made it difficult for people, again using Ace's words, to cast a cold eye on on life. But the but you know the heaney quote that I like comes from a poem that is has been quoted by Bill Clinton and by Joe Biden. In fact, I was Bill Clinton once showed off in my presence a copy of a handwritten version of this poem given to him at the American Embassy in Dublin in the 90s by Seamus Heaney. And this is the you know, the cure at Troy, where he says, you know, he has his lines, uh this is a translation of uh of a Greek drama, you know, where he says, you know, we m we must believe that a farther shore is reachable from here. And he talks about um uh once in a lifetime, justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme. I just think those lines, hope and history rhyme, are a genius way of capturing what we need to do, what we need to be as a people and as a civilization. We must try to rhyme or connect hope and history because this relentless running down of Ireland and running down of of everything that that the modern world stands for, that's a very dark and divisive and ultimately sinister project, which I will not be part of. In fact, I will resist as much as I can.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Dan Mulhall, thank you for joining us today.