Our new EU Commissioner, David Byrne, will be paying his first official visit to Ireland next week when he goes to the only part of the Euro Commission located outside Brussels or Luxembourg and one that comes within his SANCO (health and consumer protection) portfolio.
He will arrive at the EU Food and Veterinary Office in Clonskeagh at a time when the long-running saga of the move to Grange, Co Meath, is reaching a conclusion if not an end. Last month the contract was signed for a new building on a green-field site 26 miles from Dublin after endless delays and wrangling over the move. The 160 Eurocrats, minus those who resign in protest, should be installed in Co Meath within two years.
The Food and Vet office was given to Ireland when we got left out in the divvy-up of EU agencies in 1993. John Bruton proposed it be located in his own constituency and when he came to power he went about organising it. But it didn't run smoothly; first the Eurocrats refused to leave Brussels and there were more complaints with each move since - from Clare St to Blackrock to Clonskeagh. Commissioner Byrne will have more weighty matters on his mind when he calls to the office, where former FG spindoctor Peter Prendergast is director, next Friday, but it is likely he will still encounter some hostility from Eurocrats, most of them non-Irish, who dread a move to the country.
Quidnunc is at rholohan@irish-times.ie