Being Ireland's ambassador to Australia ain't all shillelaghs and shamrocks these days. Just ask the new bloke, Noel White.
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The collapse of the Irish economy four years ago, historically high levels of Irish immigration to Australia and the raging euro-zone crisis mean that being Dublin's man in Canberra is a lot more complicated than it used to be.
Ireland's reputation has taken an awful hiding in recent years with images of long unemployment queues, unfinished ''ghost'' housing estates dotted across the country and stories of the excesses and corruption of the nation's Celtic Tiger boom years dominating the narrative.
The tens of thousands of young Irish migrants into Australia's cities and regional centres are often bringing with them the sense of bitterness towards authority that has become such a marked feature of the struggling nation's public discourse in recent years.
But White is unfazed as he goes about his mission to tell Australia not to believe (all) the hype, that Ireland is on its way back despite being a ''program country,'' the polite term for bailed-out recipient nation.
For the man from Carlow, it's all about reputation.
''Ireland has been portrayed in the media as some sort of economic basket case, as if it was without hope and this was obviously hurting our reputation,'' White says.
''We're an International Monetary Fund/European Union/European Central Bank program, and as a program country, we had to pull out of the markets.
''So the first issue is reputational, is to get the message across that actually we have stabilised our finances, we have recapitalised the banks and we now have growth back into the Irish economy.
''It's not huge growth, it's not Australian growth, but it's growth nonetheless and quite frankly, looking where Europe is at and where Ireland is coming from, you'd be happy to take this growth.
''We grew at 0.5 per cent last year, around 0.5 per cent this year, possibly something of the order of 2 per cent in 2013, these are the kind of projections we are looking at, and that's an amazing turnaround.
''The other thing is promoting Ireland as a viable place to do business, a viable place to invest, and what I'm trying to do is to convey that message of an incipient recovery at the political and the public and the economic level so that those who are of a mind to invest and to do business, will do further business.''
Then there's migration.
White, his wife Nessa Delaney and their three sons should be able to identify, at least in part, with the new wave of Irish migrants that has emerged since the crash. The official residence in Yarralumla is still crammed with unpacked boxes, the lads are settling into new schools and Murphy, the family's border terrier, is still in quarantine at Eastern Creek.
Irish migration to Australia, currently at levels not seen since the 1980s, has thrown up new challenges for the nation's diplomats and White concedes that neither he, his immediate predecessor Martin O' Fainin, nor very many other Irish people thought before the 2008 collapse that they would ever again have to cope with such an influx.
''I think the 1980s (wave of migration) is probably the most comparable one to the one we have now,'' White says.
''Did Ireland, generally, think that we would be looking at a return to emigration and all that means, the heartache, the pain, the suffering? I don't think it did.
''We thought we had turned a corner and that's why the collapse of the economy was all the more traumatic.
''I don't think any of us thought that's what we would be facing.
''In the good times, my predecessors wouldn't have been looking at this significant surge in new Irish immigrants coming onto the employment market here in Australia, so it's chalk and cheese.''
But for White, a return to economic growth at home and the diplomatic response to the growing Irish presence in Australia, are inextricably linked.
''My second challenge is the whole area of immigration to this country from Ireland and that is linked to trying to grow the economy, we're trying to create the conditions in which people are not obliged to emigrate out of Ireland and equally those who have emigrated could potentially return to take up gainful employment,'' White says.
Perhaps reflecting fundamental changes Irish society has undergone in the past three decades, the economic migrant of 2012 is very different to their predecessors who were arriving on these shores in the 1980s.
''The pattern of Irish immigration into Australia is qualitatively different from anything we've seen before,'' White says.
''Particularly from the collapsed construction sector in Ireland, what we're seeing is significant numbers of skilled and semi-skilled people, from other sectors as well, the public sector and banking.
''You're looking at significant numbers of people, highly educated, families, and they're coming to Australia for jobs.''
Like every corner of the Irish civil service, Foreign Affairs has been subject to savage cuts, part of the austerity measures aimed at bringing the nation's budget deficit - 8.5 per cent of GDP - under control.
The lack of money means that White is constrained in his response to new patterns of migration.
A much-needed consulate in Western Australia, where young Irish workers are pouring in to cash in on the resources boom, is out of the question, for example.
''We have a small staff, a modest staff,'' White said. ''I would think that compared to other countries, that's a modest representation for a country this size.
''We have cuts in salaries, we have cuts in our administrative budget and our size limits what we can do in terms of promotion of the country but in terms of what we have, we try to maximise our capacity.
''So we try to leverage Irish culture, we try to engage with the Irish Diaspora.''
White spent much of his career with Foreign Affairs at the EU's hub in Brussels and has more at stake than most in watching the unfolding drama of the euro-zone debt crisis as it lurches from one trough to the next.
But he is dismissive of the prophets of doom, who for several years have been predicting the imminent demise of the single currency.
''I read last week in one of the national newspapers here that not just the euro but that Europe was finished as a concept,'' he says.
''For those of us who have worked closely with the project and who are still closely involved and follow it closely, it's not a view that we would share.
''The euro was always a hugely ambitious project, we knew that then and we're dealing now with the problems, the difficulties, the challenges that have been thrown up.
''It's not as straightforward as with the normal sovereign arrangement that you have with one country being 100 per cent responsible for its own currency in the kind of model that you see for the nation state, that you see here in Australia, it simply doesn't apply in the pooled sovereignty arrangement.
''It doesn't help to make comparisons between what would happens in a nation state and what happens in the European Union.
''The European Union is complex, it has to go through different processes and sometimes that takes time.''
White diplomatically refuses to talk about Greece,.
''We're very focused on Ireland and we'll let others speak for themselves,'' he reckons.
''I think we've turned a corner, that we have succeeded in conveying the message internationally and in Australia that Ireland is on the mend.
''Sure, we still have big challenges, sure we have unemployment that is at an unacceptable level, at 14 per cent, and sure we still have some way to go to get our deficit down to 3 per cent by 2015, which is a program target, and to get back.''
Serious times indeed over at Yarralumla but all the heavy stuff doesn't totally rule out the odd bit of Paddy-whackery.
White even managed an appearance at the Perth heats of the Rose of Tralee last weekend. Some things don't change.