Elaine Byrne, Sunday Times, 4 September 2011

My photos of Morocco

‘Power is like being with a woman for the first time. You always want more.” Over our third pot of Berber herbal tea, the male elders of a small village in central Morocco are doing their best to explain the nature of political power to me.

The liberation of Libya has reawakened a political consciousness of events beyond its borders in a people that had grown accustomed to assuming nothing would ever change. “Gadaffi is gone because the people did not want a person who thought he was the country, they decided they wanted just a country instead,” was the verdict of Mohammed, a Berber farmer who said he was 50. Harsh mountain life has aged him by another 20 years.

Personality politics and terms of office being notched on bed posts are characteristics of Middle Eastern as well as northside Dublin politics. The unintended consequences of Gadaffi’s collapse have yet to be fully appreciated, but they may be consequences which Ireland can legitimately support, given our shared historical experiences with North Africa’s Berber people.

read more »

Elaine Byrne, Sunday Times, 28 August 2011

My photos of Morocco

My interview on RTE’s John Murray Show about Ramadan, the thirty days of fasting from water & food from sunrise to sunset – from Marrakesh. Also with two Irish women who are converts to Islam, Carol-Ann Duggan & Charlotte Morshed. (about 30-40mins in)

‘You weren’t at mass this morning, of all mornings,” my sister said to me on the phone. “He praised you from the altar for representing the local community in the national media.” “He” is one of my closest friends, a Monsignor nearing retirement who is hoping that Rome will overlook him when it comes to appoint Irish bishops.

“You haven’t told him yet,” my sister guessed. A little defensively, I replied that I was going up to have breakfast with him. “Father,” I told him, “I’ve decided to do Ramadan, one of the five pillars of Islam, to experience what it’s like to be a Muslim.”

We had been over this ground before – Passover in Jerusalem, the evangelicals in Ghana, the Dublin Protestant phase, and then those factory rituals of Havana graveyards. “I’ll be travelling for a month, mostly to the Moroccan villages near the Sahara,” I told him. He laughed. “Are you sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for?” he cautioned. As it turned out, I hadn’t a clue.

read more »

I’ve been getting a lot of emails and phonecalls from undergraduates and Masters students from universities around Ireland about the “next step” – the graduate job search. Instead of repeating myself, here’s some internship and graduate programme suggestions and maybe this blog post can crowdsource some other suggestions and I’d add them to the list.

I went through the UN internship programme. Apart from the experience of living abroad, working with people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, it provided the opportunity to translate academic training into the policy world and ultimately led to consultancies with the UN and the World Bank. Although many internships are not paid, the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term financial pain.

How to get an internship

Irish Aid – interviews each Autumn
OECD – keep checking website
World Bank - Junior Professional Associate programme, also see summer internship programmes
UNDP - internship, junior professional programme
European Union stagier - (paid!)
Asian development bank - Ireland is a member of most of the international banks, therefore Irish people can apply as interns but most Irish people are not aware and they particularly promote women
UK political and policy jobs and internships
EU political and policy jobs and internships

Academic opportunities
OSCE – also contact the individual field offices
Canadian fast-track civil service programme for non-nationals (need to root around to find)
European Youth Forum
College of Bruge

Best of luck!

If the Tank Field in Cork was in Dublin, the issues it raises would probably receive the national attention it deserves. The issues around the Tank Field are not unique to Cork but have relevance to the administration of local government nationally and the decision making process within the Department of Education. It is a case-study in governance and public policy.

The Tank Field has divided the local community, split the council and focused attention on::

•  
  • the dominant role of the county manager in local government
  • the power of a city council to take over a community resource
  • how competing priorities within the Irish planning process are decided upon
  • the deficiencies in the planning process
  • the deficiencies in the Department of Education decision making process
  • the role of the GAA in the planning process
  • issues regarding the expenditure of public funds
  • issues regarding the preferential treatment afforded to Gaelscoileanna

More information:
• The Tank Field remains a live issue. Local councillors voted last month against a request to rezone the land for a new Gaelscoil. Irish Examiner report - Tank Field Examiner
• Eoin English of the Irish Examiner put both sides of the argument for and against the Tank Field here. Eoin English Tank Field
• The Gaelscoil invited public representatives to an open day today to hear its side of the story last week.
• Dr Aodh Quinlivan from University College Cork recently published a book chronicling local government in Cork. One of the chapters of Inside City Hall examines the issues around the Tank Field.
• My 2009 Irish Times piece on the tank field:
• The response to my piece by the Gaelscoil:
• FOI documents and further information on the tank field
• Those pro the tank field have set up a website – http://www.tankfield.ie/

We the Citizens concluded its assembly in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on Sunday June 26th after two months of regional meetings in Athlone, Kilkenny, Cork, Galway, Tallaght, Blancherstown and Letterkenny.  RTÉ’s Prime Time did an audience special on We the Citizens last Monday. You can catch the episode here.

 
The first session on Saturday morning was devoted to three main themes: the role of the TD; whether a new electoral system might change that; and whether the number of TDs should be reduced. The results of the 31 recommendations, voted on by members of the citizens’ assembly, can be found here. The second session focused on the Seanad. The final session on Sunday centred on tax and spends choices. Recommendations will be posted here as soon as they are collated.

The academic team of Eoin O’Malley, Jane Suiter and I were ably led by David Farrell. Together, we conceived and developed this project over the past year. The Executive Director, Caroline Erskine, was expertly assisted by Órla De Burca and Úna Faulkner in implementing the project. Luke Mcmanus did fantastic work recording the meetings.
The virtuoso, Fiach Mac Conghail, chaired all the sessions and was guided by the Board. The project would not have happened if it were not for the fantastic efforts of a large number of facilitators and note takers who ensured that the meetings were conducted in a deliberative fashion. Ken Carty, Clodagh Harris, Theresa Reidy, Nat O’Connor and Fergal O’Brien were very generous with their time giving expert testimony. Most of all thanks is due to the members of the public that attended and believed in the possibility of an idea that greater participation by people in-between elections is positive for Irish politics.

Sunday Times, July 3 2011.

‘But sure, isn’t the Dail elected by the people, an assembly of Irish citizens? What are you going about trying to set up a parallel political system for? A citizens’ assembly doesn’t make any sense at all, Elaine, and I’m still waiting on my pint.”

The thing about my dad’s rural Wicklow pub is that the customers thrive on outdoing one another to get straight to the point quickest. Academics and PhDs hold no water here. These days, the customers are curious about We the Citizens, Ireland’s first national citizens’ assembly, which held a meeting at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin last weekend.

read more »

The weekend of June 24-26th, 150 randomly selected people (by MRBI) from across Ireland will meet in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham as part of Ireland’s first National Citizens Assembly. It has been a long road for all the team at We the Citizens since the launch two months ago — We The Citizens – youtube In the last six weeks we have travelled to Kilkenny, Cork, Galway, Athlone, Letterkenny, Tallaght and Blanchstown and listened to the views of those that attended which have informed what will be discussed at next weekend’s event.

.

For me personally, it’s especially exciting to see an idea from a couple of columns I wrote in the Irish Times last December 2009 and February 2010 come to life, thanks to Atlantic Philanthropies who believed in the idea of deliberative democracy through a citizens’ assembly. Irish Times February 2010: Let the people have their say on type of country they want; Irish Times December 2009: Mad-as-hell Icelanders won’t be taking it any more

read more »

Sunday Business Post – June 12 2011

‘A member of parliament, a member of government, is concerned with social justice, with the creation of wealth and its distribution. As a judge one isn’t concerned with social justice as such, one is concerned with doing justice with the parties before him. It’s a different task.”

In this interview with David McCullagh, Declan Costello firmly made the distinction between the legislator who makes the laws and the judge whose job it is to apply them. Costello as a politician was radical on economic and social matters yet deeply conservative as a judge. These two public lives seemed at odds with one another. The 25-year-old’s inaugural Dáil speech in 1951 revealed two central tenets of his life – a belief in social justice and a strong personal faith -when he spoke of the ‘‘unChristian level of poverty’’ in Ireland.

read more »

Elaine Byrne, May 18 2011 in The Times (behind paywall)

Interview in the Financial Times, May 20 2011 by David Gardner and John Murray Brown