Limerick man Denis Corboy, the first EU ambassador to Armenia, presenting his credentials to President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Formerly head of the EU office in Dublin, Corboy is also ambassador to Georgia and has been living in Tbilisi since 1994. He says that being involved in the transformation of a charming country, devastated in the 1990s by civil war and now a normal democracy, had been the greatest experience of his life. The European Commission has invested about 80 million ecu a year (£61 million) in Georgia and 60 million ecu (£46 million) in Armenia and, he says, the result is now visible, with a fast-growing market economy.
Denis and his wife Jane returned to Dublin last week where she is fundraising for a new £500,000 orphanage for physically and mentally handicapped children in Tbilisi.