Noel Dorr joined the Department of Foreign Affairs as third secretary in January 1960. In 1962 he was sent as third secretary to Brussels to the combined Irish embassy to Belgium and Mission to the EC. In 1964 he was transferred to the embassy in Washington and he became a first secretary. Through the late sixties, he was on the Irish delegation to the UNO General Assembly. In 1973, when Ireland became an EC member State, he was the head of the press and information section at councillor level in the Departement of Foreign Affairs. In April 1974 he was appointed assistant secretary and political director in the Department. In 1980 he was sent to New York as Permanent Representative to the UNO. He was then ambassador to London from 1983 to 1987. In March 1987 he came back to Dublin as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs. He retired from the Department in June 1995. In January1996 he became Irish foreign minister's personal representative for both the intergovernmental conferences which negotiated the Amsterdam Treaty (1997) and the Nice Treaty (2000).