Ambassador Gerard Keown took up duty as Permanent Representative of Ireland to the OECD on 20 October 2021.

Mr Keown joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1996. Prior to taking up his current post, he served as UN Director and Head of UN Security Council Task Team (2020-2021). He has held the post of Diplomatic Advisor in the Department of Finance (2018–2020), Ambassador to the Republic of Poland (2015 – 2018), and Director of Strategy (2013–2015), where he coordinated a review of Irish foreign policy, The Global Island, Ireland’s Foreign Policy for a Changing World. He has also held the posts of Director for Disarmament (2013), Deputy Director of the Irish Chairmanship-in-Office of the OSCE Taskforce (2011–2012), Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Ireland to Japan (2005–2010), and European Correspondent (2004–2005). 

In addition to postings in Poland and Japan, Ambassador Keown worked for the OSCE Mission to Bosnia & Herzegovina, at the Embassy of Ireland to Austria, and at the Anglo-Irish Secretariat in Belfast.

Ambassador Keown is author of First of the Small Nations: The Beginnings of Irish Foreign Policy in the Interwar Years (OUP, 2016) and a number of articles on the history of Irish foreign policy. He is a committed to promoting gender equality, diversity and inclusion.

He holds a BA and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.