List of ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Ireland

[1] Up to and including the year 1999, the Diplomatic List issued by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office referred to the "Republic of Ireland", while the Irish Diplomatic List referred to "Great Britain".

Consequently, since 2000 the British Diplomatic List has referred to "Ireland", and the credentials presented by the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon, in 2003, were addressed to the President of Ireland, while since 2001, the Irish Diplomatic List referred to the "United Kingdom".

This was a compromise and arose because the nascent Irish state had proposed that the UK's representative should be styled as "Ambassador" rather than "High Commissioner", as was the norm in Commonwealth countries, despite Ireland itself having appointed a High Commissioner to London in 1923,[5] similarly exchanging High Commissioners with Canada, a fellow dominion, in 1938.

[6] However the UK refused to use the title of "Ambassador" as it indicated a non-existent foreign status, as UK cabinet's minutes of September 1939 recorded at the time: The Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs reported that Mr de Valera had expressed himself as willing to receive a representative of the United Kingdom Government in Dublin.

The Secretary of State thought that until [the United Kingdom] representative had been appointed, it would be undesirable that the Defence Departments should raise with the Éire Government, the grant of any major defence facilities (e.g. the use of Berehaven)[7]Similarly, the British mission in Dublin was styled not as the High Commission but as the "British Representative's Office".