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Tara Baynes, a graduate of Legal German (2018), recently started work as a Public Diplomacy Officer in the newly established Consulate General of Ireland in Munich. In the nearly 4 years leading up to her move to Munich, Tara worked as a parliamentary assistant to a German MEP and later as a civil servant in the European Parliament. Her career up until now has been heavily influenced by her Legal German studies, and she always encourages young students to continue learning foreign languages at third level, as the opportunities they unlock are endless!

Last Friday, May 9^th, Tara represented the Consulate at the jubilee celebration of the 25^th anniversary of the town twinning partnership between Bray, Wicklow and Würzburg. It was a very special opportunity to return to Würzburg for Tara, who studied at Julius-Maximilians-Universität in the city on two separate occasions – once as an Erasmus student during the academic year 2016/17 and again as a postgraduate student (LL.M.) from 2019 – 2021. Taking place in the historic City Council chamber, the jubilee ceremony was a reflection of 25 wonderful years of friendship between two partners. During her speech, Tara mentioned the importance of town twinning initiatives as meaningful and tangible expressions of European cooperation, and mentioned the high volume of Ireland’s town twinning partnerships in Germany – 13 out of 18 of Ireland’s twinned towns are situated in the Consulate’s consular area of Bayern and Baden Württemberg!