Ambassador Deirdre Ní Fhallúin. Photo: ireland.ie. From unexploded ordinance in the Mekong Delta to Gaelic football on the streets of Hanoi, Ireland’s presence in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos runs deeper than most Irish people realise, Garry O’Sullivan reports
There is something quietly remarkable about the Irish embassy in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Tucked into one of the world’s most dynamic cities — a place steeped in history and now surging forward as one of Asia’s great economic success stories — the embassy operates as both a diplomatic mission and a development engine, with reach across three countries and a mandate that goes back to 2005.
Ambassador Deirdre Ní Fhallúin has overseen this operation with a clear sense of mission. Having taken up her post in August 2023, she serves not only as Ireland’s Ambassador to Vietnam but also as non-resident Ambassador to Cambodia and Lao PDR — a triangle of countries chosen, she explains, for reasons that resonate deeply with Irish sensibility.
“When the embassy was opened here in 2005, it had a remit,” she says. “It was opened as an Irish Aid mission with the remit for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — all selected, I suppose, due to the historical resonance that a lot of Irish feel with this part of the world: the anti-colonial struggle, the overcoming of conflict, and the legacy of war.”
That sense of solidarity with people who have known occupation and suffering is not merely rhetorical. “From the very beginning there was a strong humanitarian mine action — or unexploded ordnance clearance — dimension to the programmes here in all three countries, which are still to varying degrees suffering from the aftermath of things that happened over 50 years ago,” Ambassador Ní Fhallúin says.
The furthest behind first
The ‘furthest behind first’ is a phrase that recurs in the conversation and is the animating principle of Irish Aid’s framework strategy, A Better World, and it shapes every decision the embassy makes about where to direct its funding.
In Vietnam, for many years that meant focusing on indigenous minority communities living in remote, mountainous areas — among the last to benefit from the country’s extraordinary economic transformation. The scale of that transformation is genuinely staggering. In 1990, over 60% of people in Vietnam lived in poverty. That figure is now below 3%.
“So for many years, Irish Aid focused on what we call the furthest behind in Vietnam,” the Ambassador explains. “These were people living in ethnic minority communities in rural mountainous areas.”
The total investment over the years has been considerable — up to €60 million provided to ethnic minority communities in Vietnam, according to figures Seán Farrell, the embassy’s development specialist, is on hand to verify.
But as Vietnam has ascended to middle-income status — and is now approaching upper middle-income classification — the strategic weight of Irish Aid is shifting. Cambodia and Laos remain least developed countries, and it is there that the sharpest need now lies.
“The focus of our programmes is shifting more to Cambodia and Laos,” the Ambassador confirms. “And that’s again in keeping with the framework policy that we have for all of our aid programmes — it’s always about the furthest behind first, trying to reach the most vulnerable.”
Climate, gender and the long reach of war
Farrell adds a dimension that complicates any simple narrative of progress: the accelerating impact of climate change across the region.
“Even as Vietnam has prospered and is in a very different place poverty-wise to Cambodia and Laos, the impact of climate change is evident across these countries,” he says. “Even in the time we’ve been here — floods, droughts, a massive typhoon last year that caused huge destruction across northern Vietnam.”
The embassy has responded with a growing climate response programme woven through all three countries. In Laos, where mountainous communities live in conditions of almost complete economic isolation — subsistence agriculture, little infrastructure, almost no connection to the national economy — the embassy recently launched a programme with the World Food Programme focused on climate-smart agriculture.
“Helping people to produce more,” Farrell explains, “and then to have access to markets where they can sell their produce.”
They’re not ethnic minorities in Cambodia, they’re indigenous peoples”
In Cambodia, the work is concentrated in the north and northeastern regions — the poorest part of the country, furthest from Phnom Penh, and home to indigenous communities who, Farrell is careful to note, should not be described as ethnic minorities.
“They’re not ethnic minorities in Cambodia, they’re indigenous peoples,” he says — a distinction that matters both politically and in terms of how programmes are designed and delivered.
Right across all three countries, the embassy applies what Farrell describes as a triple lens of climate, gender and governance — issues he says cut across all three societies regardless of their different levels of development.
A Minister visits
The Ambassador has previously travelled to Siem Reap in northern Cambodia with Minister Neale Richmond to launch two flagship programmes. One was a solar irrigation project — part of a wider climate mitigation initiative — and the other focused on education.
“It was really fantastic to have a Minister,” the Ambassador says, and the warmth is genuine. In a global aid environment that is, in her words, “really in a challenging place,” Ireland’s continued commitment to Official Development Assistance stands out. The Irish government under Minister of State Neil Richmond has reiterated that commitment, and Ambassador Ní Fhallúin is clearly proud of what it represents.
“I think we’re very proud and feel very fortunate to be representing a government — and Irish Aid is on behalf of the Irish people as well,” she says. “And we hope that the projects that we’re supporting… when Irish people hear about the work that’s been done in their name, they’re happy to support it.”
The Viet Celts and the Mekong Shamrocks
And then there is the other Ireland — the Ireland of Sunday mornings on muddy pitches, of jerseys and sliotars and the particular noise of a crowd that knows what it is watching.
The Irish community in Vietnam is, by the Ambassador’s account, a young one. It does not have the settled business community of some other expatriate populations — that will come as Vietnam continues to develop — but it has something arguably more characterful: a cohort of young teachers, well regarded in both public and private schools, living at full stretch in one of Asia’s most exciting cities.
“You see the youth of the Irish community here in Vietnam reflected in the strength of the GAA teams,” she says.
There are three GAA clubs in Vietnam alone: the Viet Celts in Hanoi, and two clubs in Ho Chi Minh City. Cambodia has its own club, the Corps de Khmer. And just weeks before our conversation, Ambassador Ní Fhallúin travelled to launch a GAA club in Laos — the Mekong Shamrocks — for the first time.
Farrell, himself a Viet Celts member, describes the texture of club life with obvious affection. They have two full male panels, two female teams, a hurling team and a camogie team. On Saturday mornings, 60 children show up for underage training. There are regional tournaments — the Southeast Asia games, the South Asia games, the Asia Pacific games — that take players to Singapore, Bangkok and across China.
“I think even people who didn’t play GAA at home,” Farrell says, “sometimes when they’re this far away, it’s just — it’s a social thing as well.”
The Ambassador agrees. “It’s the port of call when people arrive.”
Support flows from home too. The Global Games Fund, operated through the Department of Foreign Affairs, provides grants to clubs across the region — a recognition that the GAA is doing diplomatic and community work that no embassy programme could replicate.
Blue Dragon
But perhaps the story that best captures what the Irish community in Vietnam represents is the one involving Blue Dragon.
All of those across the region, it’s all on a voluntary basis”
Blue Dragon is a Hanoi-based organisation working with street children and young people rescued from trafficking and other dangerous situations. The Viet Celts have built a sustained relationship with the charity, running monthly fundraisers where players, coaches and children come together to raise money.
And then there is the competition. At the under-15 Asian games, the Viet Celts won. Fourteen of the seventeen players on the winning panel were members of the Blue Dragon programme.
“All of those across the region, it’s all on a voluntary basis,” Farrell says. “All of the people who are doing all of the organisation — it’s all voluntary. But again, I think it is reflective of that Irish instinct to help and get organised.”
It is a phrase that could serve as a summary of the whole Irish enterprise in Southeast Asia: the instinct to help, and to get organised. From the clearance of cluster munitions in Laos to scholarships at Irish universities, from solar irrigation in Siem Reap to a GAA pitch in Laos, Ireland is doing something in this part of the world that is, in its quiet way, extraordinary.