KEY POINTS:
For sale: 11-bedroom mansion on the second poshest street in Dublin. Master bedroom once slept in by De Gaulle. Stunning two-acre garden. Dining room comfortably sits 45. Would suit newly rich billionaire or cunning property developer. Asking price: £45 million ($115 million) which would be the highest price ever paid for a house in Ireland.
As part of a drive to restrain the cost of its diplomatic service - the second largest after America's - France is selling its vast ambassador's residence in Dublin.
It is also flogging, for an affordable £8.9 million, its embassy, which is just on the other side of leafy Ailesbury Rd in the most expensive residential area of the Irish capital.
Whether this is a sensible time to sell is open to question.
Dublin property prices, climbing vertically for more than a decade, have plunged recently.
As the Irish Times put it: "You have to admire the style of the French. The property boom is well and truly over and, voila, they put their embassy residence on the market."
Let's hope that the Quai d'Orsay, home of French diplomacy, does not make the same error as the Foreign Office, which sold off the British embassy in Dublin a few years ago. London failed to find a new building secure enough for its liking and found itself renting its old building back from its new owner (minus the garden, which had been sold for development).
The French ambassador's residence, bought by Paris in 1930, belongs to a different diplomatic age. The building is 929sq m, 10 times larger than the average semi-detached house.
The ambassador since September, Yvon Roe D'Albert, admits there are rooms he has yet to discover. "It's so big, I have to call my wife on her mobile phone if I want to talk to her," he said.
Cutting embassy costs has become an obsession for the French Government. Partly, this has been forced by the need to divert money to missions in new nations. France spends £2 billion a year on its foreign service. It owns or rents 323 diplomatic buildings around the world.
Since there are only 193 countries other than France, this may seem excessive.
You must, of course, allow for consulates, trade missions, military offices, cultural centres and ambassadors' residences.
In London, France has an embassy occupying two adjoining buildings in Knightsbridge. It has a stately ambassador's residence overlooking Hyde Park.
It also has a consulate-general, a cultural service, a cultural centre, a cultural institute, a scientific service, a treasury and a maritime attache's office - occupying six sites in the West End, all owned by the French state.
According to the French budget for 2008, "it is foreseen that all these services will be grouped together on one site".
Good idea. Except, of course, that London property prices are not what they were either. Saving money at the wrong time can be a costly business.
- Independent
