Editor's introduction: Thirty years of <i>Irish Studies in International Affairs</i>

Abstract

In addition to having a strong focus this year on the concept of the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P), this issue of Irish Studies in International Affairs marks the thirtieth year of publication of the journal?something of a milestone and one that provides an opportunity to look back over the development of the journal itself and the wider study of international affairs in Ireland over that time period. A National Committee for the Study of International Affairs had been established by the Royal Irish Academy in 1977, and the first issue of this journal two years later published a series of papers from seminars and the committee's first annual conference. That issue, edited by Liam de Paor and Patrick Keatinge, had a focus that would not be out of place today?Ireland's relationship with the League of Nations and United Nations, Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland's development policy and the direction of Irish foreign policy. The committee that oversaw the launch of the journal included, in addition to the editors, some people who have retained a connection with the Academy's international affairs committee to the present day?Garret FitzGerald and Noel Dorr?and academics who went on to publish in the journal frequently in the following years. The demand to publish the journal reflected a wider sense that Ireland needed a greater level of academic reflection on foreign affairs. The low level of debate on foreign policy matters was also of concern to members of Dail Eireann at that time. In 1978, a future leader of the Labour party, Ruairi Quinn, speaking in the first debate on foreign affairs after Fianna Fail's overwhelming victory in the 1977 election, called for a public debate on the values that should inform foreign policy. In the course of his speech, Quinn said that 'there appears to be a lack of interest in foreign affairs' and that in the past, even during the period of external affairs minister Frank Aiken's high-profile activity in the United Nations in the late 1950s, the decisions made in relation to Ireland's foreign affairs activities were 'of concern perhaps more to the individuals [involved] and the parties rather than to the public'.1 He argued that this was set to change,