Ireland has put ex-EU trade and agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan’s hat into the ring to be the next head of the UN’s food and agriculture agency.
Government has nominated former EU agriculture and trade chief Phil Hogan as Ireland’s candidate to be the next director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
A vote of the 194 FAO member states in summer 2027 will determine the agency’s next director general.
Hogan’s nomination follows a Department of Agriculture call for expressions of interest from eligible candidates this January.
The Department has said that Ireland had been “encouraged by EU partners to consider putting forward a candidate” for the UN job that has not been filled by a European for the past 50 years.
Hogan had served as European Commissioner for Agriculture from 2014 to 2019 and Commissioner for Trade from 2019 to 2020 when he stepped down in the wake of the golfgate controversy.
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The Kilkenny native had been Minister for the Environment in 2011 to 2014 under then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny, having served a shorter stint as finance minister in the mid-1990s.
Hogan’s expression of interest was ranked highest by a “high-level independent selection board of four people” with experience of agri-food policy, governance and human resources.
His name was then put forward for Government consideration by Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon on Tuesday.
Any costs to the Exchequer of running a candidate in the UN FAO director general election will be “proportionate and managed within existing Departmental and diplomatic resources” the Department of Agriculture said.
“It is expected that the selected candidate will cover any additional personal or campaign-related costs.”
Two Department staff are to assist the campaign in addition to carrying out their other duties.
Published in Irish Farmers Journal