Department of Foreign Affairs apologises over Covid-19 champagne party picture

The Department of Foreign Affairs has released an apologetic statement after an image of Covid-19 breach was published in a number of newspapers.

The image, which was published in the Irish Daily Star, Daily Mail and Irish Mirror newspapers today, shows around 20 officials from the Dept's UN Security Council campaign team gathered together with glasses of champagne while posing for a photograph indoors on June 17, 2020.

It has since been confirmed that it was a "selfie" taken by Niall Burgess, who was the secretary general of the Dept at the time but has since been appointed ambassador to France.

He tweeted the image with the caption "Now we’re walking on air…", but deleted it soon afterwards.

During this time, people could only meet up to six others from outside their household in both indoor and outdoor settings.

A spokesperson for the Dept said that its members "briefly let their guard down" 18 months ago at Iveagh House, whilst celebrating Ireland’s election to the council.

They elaborated: "Had Ireland not won the Council seat on the first round of voting, the team would have had to work through the night to campaign for a second vote the next day."

The spokesperson added that "steps have been taken" to ensure that a similar incident does not happen again.

Despite these assurances, there has been an outcry on social media, with Irish writer Michael Nugent saying on Twitter: "It must have been a magical 'moment' during which champagne bottles and glasses suddenly appeared in the office without any planning."

Another user referred to the response from the Dept as being "pretty casual, dismissive and contains no apology."

In addition to this controversy, the Dept of Foreign Affairs has also come under fire after files that were recently released by the National Archives have shown that unknown officials used black humour to create a list of interpretations of common responses to queries from members of the public about family members trapped in Kuwait and Iraq in late 1990.