Who's the boss

Ireland's aid leaders

Ireland's aid leaders

Justin Kilcullen, Trócaire

Justin Kilcullen was appointed director of Trócaire, the Irish Catholic agency for overseas development, in 1993. He is one of the most effective advocates in the area and does not hesitate to criticise Government policy or the lack of it, or to take a stance on a political issue when he sees fit. He was particularly outspoken on the need for the Government to "put its money where its mouth is" by meeting the UN target of allocating 0.7 per cent of GNP to overseas aid. This is now due to be achieved by 2012. The Trócaire director spoke at the Make Poverty History (MPH) rally in Dublin last July, before the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in Scotland. Prior to the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Kilcullen said the new pontiff should become "the moral voice" behind the MPH campaign, arguing, "the issue of Africa and poverty is the leading moral and ethical question of our time." In that spirit, he has accused the World Trade Organisation (WTO) of "overseeing a global trade system which has generated unprecedented wealth for a disproportionate few".

Kilcullen's vision of Christianity is a radical one and he says, "Catholic teachings on social justice demand that the church lead the way in helping the world's oppressed". Kilcullen comes from Dublin and graduated with a degree in architecture from University College Dublin in 1975. He joined Trócaire as a project officer for Africa in October 1981 and served as Trócaire representative in Laos from 1988 until 1992, working on the design and construction of camps for Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees.

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In 2004 he was presented with an award by the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland for his work on earthquake resistant housing in El Salvador. "It's not earthquakes that kill people," he said at the time. "It's buildings falling on them."

The answer was to build houses with materials such as adobe, brick, bamboo and chicken wire instead of heavy tiles, timber and blocks.

Kilcullen is a past president of Co-opération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité (Cidse) - an international alliance of 16 Catholic development organisations in Europe and North America. In 2000 he was appointed as a Consultor (adviser) to the Pontifical council Cor Unum, the Vatican body that coordinates the charitable work of the Catholic Church.

He is currently vice-president of Concord, the confederation of European development non-governmental organisations, representing more than 1,500 such non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the European Union and he chairs the Concord working group on "NGO Futures".

The Trócaire director is a regular guest-speaker on issues of development, human rights, social justice and the ethics of globalisation. Justin Kilcullen does not subscribe to the John O'Shea philosophy of channelling aid exclusively through non-governmental bodies, believing that the scale of world poverty can only be tackled by distributing aid from the rich to the poor countries on a government-to-government basis, with strict safeguards against corruption in place.

Tom Arnold, Concern

He doesn't have the media profile of other top players in the development area but Tom Arnold is widely respected for his ability and commitment as chief executive of Concern. "Hunger is his real passion," said one observer. He is a leading member of almost every major world body that combats hunger, whether in the European Union, United Nations or the NGO sector.

Personally rather shy and self-effacing, observers say Arnold is a profoundly decent man who drives himself hard in his role as head of the country's largest humanitarian agency which has 3,200 staff around the world.

Observers say people find it difficult to keep up with Arnold's "phenomenal" work-rate. "He works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and his mobile is never switched off." Colleagues with an industry or business background say he is one of the hardest-working people they have ever met.

A colleague says Arnold is constantly lobbying and negotiating with contacts at every level, from Kofi Annan, who he is personally friendly with, to the newest Concern volunteer. "He has a Clinton-like capacity to engage with people on an individual basis as though there was no one else in the room. His mantra is, 'How do we up our game?' And the game for Tom Arnold is the eradication of hunger and poverty. If he had taken another road he could be head of a major agribusiness group or at the very top of the civil service, but his chosen task of tackling hunger and poverty came first."

Arnold took over as Concern's senior administrator in October 2001, succeeding David Begg who became general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions. He had previously been assistant secretary in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development since 1993.

Prior to that he served as chief economist with the department and as a senior economist with Acot, now Teagasc, the farm advisory and research service.

He was Chairman of the OECD's

Committee for Agriculture between 1993 and 1998.

In an earlier phase of his career, from 1973 to 1983, Arnold worked for the European Commission, spending much of that time dealing with development issues. This included spending three years in Africa during the late 1970s, based in the Ivory Coast and Malawi. He joined Concern as a voluntary worker after his return to Ireland in 1983.

Arnold comes from a farming family in Lusk, Co Dublin, and took a degree in Agricultural Economics at UCD in 1972, followed by a Master's in Business Administration (MBA) from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium in 1983.

John O'Shea, Goal

Words such as "colourful" and "larger-than-life" were invented with people like John O'Shea in mind. The chief executive of the humanitarian aid agency Goal probably has the highest media profile of any Irish person working full-time in emergency relief and Third World development. Always ready with a well-turned soundbite or pithy comment, he never shies away from controversy and often seems to court it; delicate diplomacy and John O'Shea are strangers.

It's an approach that usually gets results. Goal brings in sizeable donations from the public and from the Irish, UK and US governments, the EU and the UN, as well as other sources, for its efforts in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

O'Shea has won numerous awards for his humanitarian work and Goal was recently invited along with two US organisations to take part in a discussion with President Bush on Pakistan earthquake relief. Other workers in the aid area resent the media attention given to what they regard as his politically-incorrect views and regard his critique of governmental corruption in the developing world and his near-total opposition to bilateral government-to-government aid as over-the-top.

Their counter-argument to O'Shea is that there are very few perfect democracies in existence and that the shortcomings of Third World governments must be balanced against the benefits of the aid programme for ordinary people. But the Kerryman regards it as one of his missions in life to persuade the Government to stop sending money to venal Third World regimes - and they are virtually all on the take, in his view.

O'Shea has majored on Uganda, where, he claims, corruption is particularly widespread and he has become the sharpest public critic of President Yoweri Museveni whom he accuses of warmongering on a massive scale in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Ugandan leader came to Dublin two years ago in an apparent attempt to rebut O'Shea's attacks, which he described as "stupid and contemptible". When O'Shea refused to meet him, Museveni said: "You wish for the buffalo to come and, when the buffalo comes, you run away." However Goal claimed a "notable success" that same year when €10 million in direct budgetary support to the Kampala administration was diverted to non-government channels.

Even his greatest admirers would not list caution among the Goal CEO's more obvious virtues. He paid a price when he criticised the Government for donating €1 million to US recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and was quoted as claiming the US was "awash with billionaires". Shortly afterwards it was reported that Irish-American journalist Niall O'Dowd and business consultant Declan Kelly had resigned from the US board of Goal.

Now aged 61, O'Shea worked as a sports journalist with the now-defunct Evening Press and built an impressive reputation for breaking exclusive stories. An accomplished sportsman in his day, he has persuaded many sports stars to support the work of Goal.

O'Shea once declared his credo as follows: "If you're physically and mentally fit, you have a moral obligation to help those in greatest need."