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The issue of standards for community work might seem a bit on the esoteric side. Yet, they cannot be ignored by anyone concerned about our unequal and harsh society. They need to become a central point of reference for a community sector under ever increasing threat and pressure, if it is to continue to make its key contribution to social change. The new All Ireland Standards for Community Work serve as a guide for those involved in this work. Moreover, they should catalyse a discussion on the priorities for this work at a time when funders’ bureaucratic requirements increasingly distract energy and attention. They should also guide the funders and policymakers who interact with the sector. In particular, those who are marginalised, excluded and living in poverty, must have a direct say in the decisions that affect their lives if the decisions are to be effective. Community work has a key role in ensuring this happens. It engages those who depend the most on quality public services, and who therefore need, more than anyone else, support in decision-making. Representative democracy is no substitute. Community work is identified in the Standards as a “developmental activity comprised of [sic] both a task and a process”. The task is social change to achieve equality, social justice and human rights. The process is participation, empowerment and collective decision making in a structured and co-ordinated way. It is about the right and the capacity of people who experience exclusion to have their voices heard. In the past, this work was given greater recognition and support by the state. It was accepted as an important and valuable means of promoting participative forms of democracy. The collapse of this support is one reason why these Standards are important. Funding for community organisations has been slashed. The Community Development Programme funded over 150 independent projects working in local areas with high levels of disadvantage and poverty and with groups, such as Travellers and women, experiencing inequality and discrimination. The participation, empowerment and collective decision-making which the projects promoted have all but disappeared. Many previously independent organisations are now effectively under the control of local authorities. The role of community work in informing public policy and in mobilising communities to articulate and pursue their interests is no longer recognised. Many of those involved argue that their role has been reduced to delivering services that the state cannot or will not provide. The Standards reassert the role of community work. Promoting equality and inclusion will inevitably, from time to time, bring those involved in this work into public debate and disagreement with decision makers. Policy-makers need to acknowledge the importance, for democracy, of this critical and constructive dissent. The Standards demand professional standards from people working in community organisations, whether this work is being undertaken on a paid or voluntary basis. These demands are based on giving practical expression to five core values: • Collectivity, with action to support communities to come together, reflect on their situation and take action for change, given that shared issues won’t be addressed by dealing with individual problems alone. • Community empowerment, with action to ensure that people experiencing poverty and inequality are supported and empowered to work for change. • Social justice and sustainability, with action to support people to advocate for their rights, challenge the unequal distribution of power, wealth and resources, and advocate for policies and practices that are environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. • Human rights, equality and non-discrimination, with action to support communities to recognise and challenge oppression, stereotyping, and prejudice, build connections and solidarity with people in other parts of the world, and promote the human rights of women and marginalised groups; • Participation, with action to ensure meaningful participation by people experiencing poverty and inequality in the design, implementation, and monitoring of policies and programmes addressing these issues. The former Department of Community, Environment and Local Government has produced a new Framework Policy for Local and Community Development. Community Work Ireland is concerned about the failure of this policy to address some key issues. The Department’s next step is to prepare an implementation plan. This plan must shape an approach and a structure for supporting community work based on the core values in the Standards. The Standards were produced by the All Ireland Endorsement Body for Community Work Education and Training and were supported by Community Work Ireland. Rachel Doyle is joint national coordinator of Community Work Ireland. By Rachel Doyle

Review by Michael Smith Enda Kenny’s former legal adviser has published a book. Jennifer Carroll MacNeill tells “the inside story of the process by which judges were chosen over the past three decades, both in cabinet and in the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board”. Barrister (and former solicitor), Dr Carroll Mac- Neill has worked as a lawyer in the public service, both within the Oireachtas as Legal Adviser in the Office of the Leader of Fine Gael and within Government as Special Adviser in the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and in the Department of Justice and Equality. Carroll MacNeill is married to Hugo, head of Goldman Sachs in Ireland. Enda Kenny sees the book as “A defense [sic] of the basic principles of democracy … This book is indispensable for the makers of policy … invaluable … one of a kind”. He (Enda not Hugo) was speaking at the book’s launch. The problem is that the book that needed to be written would not have been one Enda Kenny would have been comfortable with. This book should, but does not, spill the dirt on the cronyism that underlies all these appointments, notably including his. Since it does not, it is better categorised as “the outside story”. There are of course different ways for a state to handle appointments to the vital third branch of government, the judiciary – involving more or less compromising roles for the other two, the executive and the legislative. None of the machination is ideal as it results in undesirable transgression of the balance of powers. It would be an improvement if judges could be selected without the tainted hand of politics, or even humankind, in the process. Perhaps by some comprehensive futuristic algorithm! According to Carroll: “Some systems are exclusively based on the preferences of the executive, some systems require approval of nominations by the legislature, some appoint judges according to a quota by different branches of the political system and some restrict the involvement of politicians to selecting among individuals who have been pre-screened by an independent body comprising judges and representatives of the legal profession”. Interestingly, the US alone among common law countries has literally no requirements for appointment to its courts, though of course there is stringent scrutiny of Supreme Court candidates by the legislature including a Senate Judiciary Committee. In Ireland, tediously, judges must have 12 years (10 for the District Court) experience as a barrister or solicitor. Carroll clearly has a very tidy mind and the use of consistently clear graphics is a boon to readers. For example she highlights the processes that have led to reform of judicial appointments in various countries showing, across a range of criteria, how relatively little consultation there has been in Ireland. Indeed the entire debate on reform took only two years, as opposed to years in the other countries she considered. She notes the tradition of political appointments in both Ireland and England. Between 1800 and 1921 in Ireland over half of judges had sat in the House of Commons and nearly three quarters had been law officers ie apparatchiks like the Attorney General or Solicitor General. The tradition of allowing them the right of first refusal on judicial appointments that arise during their tenure also arises from that time. In Ireland High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court judges are now recommended by the Judicial Appointments Advisory Council and the Cabinet (ie the executive) makes the decision on advice from the Minister for Justice and Attorney General and with the consent of the Taoiseach. In practice of the ‘executive’ only the Taoiseach, Minister for Justice and leaders of any coalition partner, are involved in the selection. Unlike in England and Wales (where the Prime Minister selects the judge after nomination of one candidate by the Judicial Appointments Commission) and unlike Israel (where the Judicial Selection Committee selects the judge), the Irish government retains significant discretion to choose any person to fill a judicial vacancy. This is because unfortunately, “over the 20 years of its operation, the advisory board did not use the range of powers given to it to assess judicial candidates, was not provided with sufficient secretarial or professional supports and suffered from a substantial absence of process and Oireachtas oversight”. Worse, Carroll MacNeill says, the board made a “crippling“ change of strategy when it decided to change its process for recommending judges. Instead of performing a careful selection that would recommend the seven (or fewer) best candidates as provided in law, the board decided it would in the future simply approve all applicants deemed not to be explicitly “unsuitable”. The number of names recommended to government “increased substantially from about seven to roughly 20, 50 or 100 names for a High Court, Circuit Court or District Court vacancy respectively”. In Ireland this means the executive has almost free reign to appoint someone whose – real or perceived – politics they favour or, more pertinently, who favours theirs. A Bill proposed by Sinn Féin recently would have reduced the number to three and added two members to the Board, another lay person and a Chairperson who would be the Chairperson (I believe she means Chief Commissioner) of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, and the reasons for recommending the candidates would be published, something Carroll MacNeill considers risky. Ireland gets the lowest score for political commitment to reform of all the countries she looks at. Even the debate on reform took two weeks as opposed to years in all other countries. And this poses the question why there was – nonetheless – reform. The answer – the centrepiece of this book – appears to be as a reaction to the collapse of the Fianna Fáil- Labour government in 1994. This had two causes. Labour wanted to appoint Donal Barrington to the vacant chief justiceship but he was on the European court and, apparently frustratingly for them, not entitled to be considered. Fianna Fáil wanted to appoint Liam

Christopher Hitchens, no stranger to contrarian positions, once wrote a remarkable polemic called ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ impugning Kissinger for being as guilty as any common war criminal of crimes against humanity. In evidence Hitchens proffered his inculpation in the murder of democratically-elected Chilean president Salvador Allende. After General Pinochet assumed power Kissinger told Richard Nixon that the US “didn’t do it”, but “we helped them…created the conditions as great as possible”. Hitchens also marshalled in evidence Kissinger’s sponsoring of the carpet-bombing of Cambodia, and his and Gerald Ford’s oblique tolerance, and perhaps approval, of genocide in Indonesia. At the time the book had an incendiary effect but the allegations were not immediately directed into concrete legal action. Ultimately of course Kissinger had to leave France with unseemly haste with an arrest warrant pending and return to the safe refuge of the US where he thrives as a nonagenarian staple of talk shows, the idol of Fox News and a totemic visionary of Realpolitik. Such is the shadow existence of a once lethal global potentate. But Kissinger is old news, disempowered, with the historic crimes fading over time and mercifully, absent a call from Trump, out of harm’s way. Though you never know, such is the plausibility in our unethical world of the king of statecraft. Realpolitik has moved on from such crude seventies tactics as murdering a head of state to simply disemboweling him metaphorically – as with Tsipras – with the panoply of capitalism. Moreover we have, some of us, moved on to business-craft. From the modernist, almost industrial complex of building that is UCD stands out a splendid new addition, the Sutherland school of law, a sleek new premises which “incorporates teaching and learning facilities which are purpose built to foster and support more experiential styles of learning”. This is most apparent in the Clinical Legal Education Centre which incorporates a trial room suitable for mock trials, though not of its benefactors of course. If Peter Sutherland were a building it would be this building for, though well-upholstered, it’s a little top-heavy. Why do we never name schools of law after true heroes, or at least flawed ones? The Mansfield School of law, The Sean McBride or Mary Robinson School of law? Of course international businessmen and plutocrats of all sort seek, in the dusk of lives dedicated to the pursuit of money, to have their reputations magnified for future generations. Tony O’ Reilly, by far the most elegant of the Irish philanthropists, has his sponsored buildings in Trinity and UCD, named – perhaps – after his parents. But these things are done better and with fewer strings in the US, where the culture and indeed the tax regime are more conducive: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are charitable icons and are scrupulously divesting themselves of their assets in the common good; many US universities depend on philanthropy. Naturally the Sutherland school seems a bit more business- friendly than its fuddy-duddy anonymous predecessor: it aims to make “our teaching and learning challenging, rewarding, relevant, and critical in engaging with the challenges of law in Irish and international business, social, political and economic life”. If Goldman Sachs did law faculties it might probably do this one. It is not clear whether the minions and opinion-formers, rushing to their lectures, have been encouraged to downgrade human rights, the environment and culture as part of the process of embracing their exciting challenges. Peter Sutherland is a unique case; a pasha of world fuzzy democracy, a knight of the British realm described in the Financial Times in 2009 as “at the centre of the establishment in all its forms”, a querulous and basilisk Buddha, looking down from a great height at the mortals of the world and their fig-leaves of democracy and national sovereignty, barriers to the elevation of trade that his career has so eminently promoted. But let us construct a narrative for this man. Gonzaga, UCD and King’s Inns educated and aggressively-rugby-playing, he became Attorney General of Ireland in his 30s, after a brief and unsuccessful electoral dalliance with Fine Gael; and then was made the youngest ever EU commissioner – for Competition, in which capacity he was famously dynamic, driving competition in the airline, telecoms and energy sectors, and attracting the admiration of federalist Commission President, Jacques Delors. He chaired the Committee that produced The Sutherland Report on the completion of the Internal Market of the EEC. Only Ireland’s dreary civil-war politics deprived Sutherland of the job he coveted most when, back in 1994, the UK recommended him for the post of European Commission president. His strings to Fine Gael meant he did not enjoy the support of his own country’s government, then led by petfood Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. Tellingly, he once told the Financial Times: “I do absolutely believe in the European project. I think it’s the most noble political ideal in European history in a thousand years”. The Competition Commissionership was the first step in his championing of globalisation, internationalisation, sovereign fluidity, and the promotion of economic liberalisation. Of course Sutherland can surely speak the language of progress and ethics – and he is even, as a Good Catholic, an economic advisor to the Vatican, Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (and President of the International Catholic Migration Commission). Nevertheless his work – and even his lifestyle – bespeaks slavery to the amoral deities of capital, profligacy and greed. Globetrotting private jets, secret meetings in the Vatican or with the Bilderberg Group, carefully regulated and deliberately evasive public appearances: bread and butter for decades for this warrior for the business agenda. It is of course an ambivalent existence – grey: not a matter black and white. He is an agent of liberalisations the upshot of which he feels no obligation to take responsibility for. The Moral Charge Sheet So we propose a new offence. Let’s leave it shy of a crime for there is no

Isn’t it nothing sort of remarkable that the Irish Independent failed to explore the extraordinary role played by Michael Noonan and his officials in the Department of Finance in the Project Eagle affair until just after the votes were counted in the February election? While the newspaper had covered the story over several months it found space on its front page for an exploration of Noonan’s role only after the election results were in, and partisan energy had considerably dissipated. This followed the publication of a report by the Stormont finance committee into the Project Eagle affair which, as Village has revealed over several months, contributed directly to the resignation of Peter Robinson as first minister and DUP leader late last year. The committee report expressed concern at Noonan’s willingness to ignore embarrassing information about controversial fee payments of which he was informed and instead of halting the bidding process instructed NAMA to proceed with the disposal of the massive residential and commercial loan portfolio. In early 2014, NAMA was informed by Pimco, a US fund bidding for the £4 billion (€6.5 billion) property portfolio that it had been asked for a £15 million success fee to be divided between US law firm Brown Rudnick, Belfast solicitors Tughans and a member of the agency’s advisory committee in Northern Ireland, Frank Cushnahan, in connection with the Project Eagle tender. NAMA informed Noonan of this irregular and enormous side-payment request but, instead of halting the process, the finance minister suggested that the largest sale of property assets in the history of the state should proceed. Pimco withdrew from the process on the instructions of its compliance officers in the US. Another giant US fund, Cerberus, subsequently purchased the portfolio for £1.2 billion (€1.6 billion) later that year before it emerged that in excess of Stg£6 million (€7 million) had been lodged by lawyers acting for it in an Isle of Man account. The money was lodged by then Tughans partner, Ian Coulter and, according to Mick Wallace TD, was intended for Cushnahan and others including, it has been alleged, a leading politician or party. In February last, the BBC Spotlight programme broadcast a secret recording in which Cushnahan admitted that he was due a significant fee from the Cerberus deal, contradicting previous claims that he was not due to receive any money. Cushnahan, a former adviser in Robinson’s office of NI First Minister, also claims he and Coulter had put the Cerberus deal together but his role was kept secret from Nama. On top of these claims it has now emerged that a senior executive from Fortress, the underbidder against Cerberus in the deal, met Cushnahan and Ronnie Hanna, then NAMA head of asset recovery, in December 2012 to discuss the agency’s Northern Ireland loan-book some 12 months before it was put up for open sale. Cushnahan left the NI advisory board of NAMA in late 2013 while Hanna resigned from NAMA in late 2014, six months after the sale to Cerberus was completed. Mike George, the managing director of the US private equity group, a Belfast man, made a presentation to the NAMA pair at the Tughans office in Belfast during the December 2012 meeting. NAMA has refused to respond to queries over this latest revelation which puts a former senior NAMA executive in a room alongside a former advisor to the agency who has admitted to seeking side payments from the enormous sale. George refused to confirm that such a meeting took place when contacted by Village last autumn but said he was concerned about the manner in which the Project Eagle sales process was conducted, indicating that some bidders had access to more information than others on the quality and value of the huge portfolio of distressed assets across the North. Can anyone seriously suggest that Michael Noonan is suitable to have have his tenure as finance minister renewed in a new government while questions surrounding his judgement and actions in the Project Eagle controversy remain unanswered? By Frank Connolly