One of the guests on RTÉ’s Upfront programme this week was Dr. Ciara Smyth of the Irish Human Rights Centre based at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She lectures in migration and asylum law, and previously worked for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.
No mention was made of the fact that she was previously vice chair of the board of the Irish Refugee Council (IRC).
Dr Ciara Smyth is part of the Irish refugee council.
RTE forgot to mention that. #IrelandBelongsToTheIrish
— Niall O’Hara 🇮🇪 (@ThoughtsToby) April 9, 2024
It was noticeable too, that while Smyth made reference on Upfront to the “concerns” of communities, she took a far different approach when interviewed on Drivetime on January 17.
She was certainly not sympathetic to said communities in that outing, and threw in the old saw about the “far right” with regard to local protests.
She was also asked on Drivetime about concerns regarding persons arriving here in large numbers from countries in which there are no wars or internationally recognized crises to justify this. She appeared to claim that Nigeria was practically ungovernable and also rejected the depiction of Georgia as a safe country – as now designated by the state – as there might be “individual victims of persecution and human rights abuses.”
Dr. Smyth’s previous role with the IRC and her association with the Irish Human Rights Centre at NUIG are relevant given that both have benefitted hugely from funding and connections that have focused on the liberalization and normalization of the Irish state’s migration and asylum systems.
Indeed, it would be little exaggeration to state that both institutions, and some of their main funders, have been instrumental in that liberalization and normalization process. This can be seen directly in the funding of both the IRC and the Human Rights Centre by Atlantic Philanthropies – the fund founded by US billionaire Chuck Feeney which has pumped hundreds of millions into organisations seeking change in Ireland.
Between 1997 and 2014 the Irish Refugee Council received more than $7 million from the Chuck Feeney Atlantic fund, a figure which includes a grant worth $3 million awarded to the IRC in 2014. That enabled it to expand its operations exponentially over that period and subsequently, particularly since 2014 when its workforce of 8 grew to 42 by 2022.
If there is a perceived need for such migrancy and racism bureaucracies, and the IRC is only one part of a large and expanding network, then they ought to be able to survive on their own two feet with voluntary public donations rather than being dependent on politically motivated foreign foundations and the state.
The latter point is central, as while the expansion of the IRC and other advocacy NGOs would have been impossible without the injection of the billionaire funds, the key factor – as it has been for similar advocacy NGOs kick started and still partly dependent on Woke Capital – is that since 2014 it has managed to draw down somewhere close to €2 million in public funds.
Atlantic Philanthropies has played the same role in the genesis and sustenance and role of the Irish Human Rights Centre. On its webpage, which is part of the National University of Ireland, Galway site, the Centre states that it is “one of the world’s premier academic human rights institutions, dedicated to the study of human rights, peace and conflict, international criminal law and humanitarian law, international refugee and migration law, gender and human rights and climate justice.”
What it neglects to inform us is that the Centre is entirely the creature of Atlantic Philanthropies. It would not exist were it not for the fact that in 1998 Atlantic made a grant of $1,004,278 to NUIG for the express purpose of “establishing a centre for human rights”.
While some will claim that Feeney and the money he gave to the IHRC and others was solely generated by a concern to help, the foreword to Liam Collin’s book which he wrote for Atlantic on its role here begins by describing how they saw Ireland, namely, “a conservative society where human rights for many were constrained, and services for the young and old were limited, at best.”
Atlantic Philanthropies has written that it used the law to “secure social change on the Island of Ireland”, and boasted that its grantee “focus on providing legal advice and representation to particular groups including the Irish Refugee Council, the Immigrant Council of Ireland.”
It boasts that Atlantic’s support “helped strengthen and expand the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) and Marriage Equality (and its predecessor), two organizations that laid the groundwork for passage of a civil partnership law in 2010”. They note the referendum on Marriage Equality then followed.
In the same report, Atlantic explains that the fund’s leadership provided the money to pilot the Constitutional Conventions which then became the Citizens Assemblies – the vehicles for so much social change, though the last effort failed spectacularly on March 8th with a landslide double NO vote in referenda.
Feeney – the “great visionary” as Collins depicts him after the fashion of admirers of the Songs of Pyongyang – or perhaps more accurately, Feeney’s proteges here, knew exactly what they were at.
The concept of human rights in this context only holds up if one considers that the right of two persons of the same sex to get married is a human right, or that abortion is a human right, or that unrestricted immigration under the rubric of asylum is a human right. Which is where the Human Rights Centre comes into play – to provide intellectual and academic backing for such claims. Claims that are not as axiomatic as they and others might wish us to imagine them to be.
The Centre itself appears to be influenced by contentious intellectual trends on the left. For example Professor Anna Arstein-Kerslake developed the first module on Critical Social Theory, which includes Critical Race Theory, at NUIG. She is also the Athena SWAN lead on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion there.
Professor Siobhán Mulally used to be the Chair of the Irish Refugee Council and was also on the board of another migrant advocacy NGO, NASC. She has also been a Commissioner with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and is currently a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs committee on human rights.
Professor Roja Fazeli is currently the Chair of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, an NGO which received almost $9 million in funding from Atlantic Philanthropies. She is also involved with the Marie Sklodowska-Curie foundation EU funded NETHATE project whose purpose you can probably guess.
Ironically, perhaps, in its trumpeting of its role in changing Ireland, Atlantic claims that one of Feeney’s motivations was to address a situation in which “university graduates were leaving for other countries, creating a brain drain that could be potentially devastating to Ireland’s future.” How is that going then? There is no small connection between Atlantic’s success in funding the drivers of mass immigration and the fact that so many educated and employed young people leave the country.
Perhaps we need some academic institution or state-funded entity to investigate all of that? Rather than leave it to investigators such as ourselves at Gript and others. The Gaelic League and the GAA and the Irish trade union and cooperative societies and national press of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were free of such dependency and clearly that independence is preferable.
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Does Dr. Ciara Smyth not trust the Irish public to decide who they want to give their charity to? Must the government and its favoured NGOs control and dole out money with limited or no transparency and accountability? I see money going to political and ideological causes which in my opinion is not charity. Why should foundations in the US be allowed to pour in money into causes people like her identify without public scrutiny? If she is so convinced these are worthy causes, why do they not make their case to the Irish public and ask for donations? The public would then be free to closely examine and decide if they want to give support. There is just one problem: the real charities would flourish and the government favoured NGOs and their causes die.
Its to a minority at least, most of the people are awake to some degree now thankfully. Nothing wakes a person up more than a few hundred illegal immigrants from backwards land being put on your doorstep.
Feeney was a genuine individual.
And cared about Ireland.
But the administrators of the monies received.
They have their own specific agenda’s
And specific targets.
It doesn’t need mentioning anymore that Feeneys money probably wasn’t spent as he envisaged.
It was for education grant’s originally if I recall correctly.
And seems to have been diverted to wokeism.
Would that be a fair observation?
Oh and the Atlantic philanthropy gravy train is done!
Where are the checks coming from now for the NGOs
I do not have any evidence about Feeney’s intentions or motivations. However, there is plenty of evidence of the pernicious influence of his financial contributions to various NGOs. You will note, for example, that he did not fund the pro like movement or any other pro family organizations so, based on that, you may infer his intentions.
I would find it hard to justify your assertions that Feeney either cared about Ireland or was genuine. He was, however, rich and able to use that to further his own personal ideologies.
@Peter if you read through the comments from@Michael below.
He explains what I attempted to put across successfully.
It would seem strange that Feeney would not have influence over his foundation if he was financing it tbh. He hardly set it up for one purpose and wasn’t able to influence how it turned out I would have thought.
In any case it is what it is and I think we both agree that his money had a malign influence on Irish political discourse.
They are being funded by the taxpayer. Atlantic put massive funding into setting up these groups but they are now a drain on the public purse. The Government should have let them die away when the Atlantic funding ceased.
That’s what I thought!
Loads more NGO to do on the taxpayers coin.
Did you read the article? Chuck Feeney wanted to change conservative Ireland, ‘to secure social change of the island of Ireland’.
He set out to subvert our lovely country with the American dollar.
We should have laws against this kind of invasion by an invader with money. What he did is the equivalent of being attacked by an invading country.
Is hell hot, Chuck?
Ya dirty bastard, ya.
I’ve always wondered was chuck Feeny sidelined from his own foundation it seems like he started off as brick and mortar projects and investments like University of limerick. At what point did it change to a leftist influence peddling machine couldn’t imagine chuck being a leftist Liberal I thought his charity was influenced by his blue collar irish catholic background. Can anyone fill me in is it the man himself pursuing this agenda or was his foundation hijacked by Liberals ?
That’s pretty much what I was wondering as well.
I’ve always remembered in chuck Feenys documentary the part where chuck Feeny got dressed down by Michael mcdowell and bertie ahern for backing the center for public inquiry to investigate corruption in Ireland absolute disgrace Michael Mcdowell as if he wasn’t aware of berties sordid history of corruption . He shouldn’t be given column space on gript now I see willie o dea being giving column space I don’t know why gript are sanitising these individuals both part and parcel of the system which is destroying Ireland.
Willie O’Dea, like Charlie Flanagan being given column space to backpeddle on issues that they fully participated in as part of government decisions. Flanagan was a cheerleader for mass immigration, O’Dea voted on a Bill he didn’t read. They, like Sinn Fein, changing tack to try and trick the public as we’re coming into elections. They showed scant respect for the public. They can all go to hell for their deliberate destruction of this country.
Exactly marie willie o dea is clearly positioning himself as a future leader of fianna fail once the inevitable fall out begins after next year’s General election has already started to court the Conservative vote gript shouldn’t be catering to the connivance and opportunism of these people utter contempt is all that these people deserve these individuals all rode the wave of liberalism when it suited them. Now they sense the tide is turning and want to be at the forefront of a resurgent center ground .
Feeney wasn’t a big fan of activism. He was a bricks a mortar advocate. He came to an agreement with the foundation management that so long as he was free to fund his bricks and mortar projects then they got to do their ‘activism’ stuff. Here’s the important thing, legally it wasn’t his money. If it was his money it’d be taxed. It was held in a foundational trust. Feeney wasn’t a fan of tax. Philanthropist aren’t usually fans of taxation. They like to pick and choose. Which usually means funding elite institutions like trinity. Ironic given the word philanthropy. Anyhow, the foundation was incorporated in Bermuda for tax efficiency. There’s an interesting story to be told about Atlantic and how it was managed. Anyhow, the leader of Atlantic’s rights activism in Ireland was Martin O’Brien. https://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/about/bios/martin-obrien.
Matt, it might make an interesting piece to take a look at what Mr. O’Brien is currently involved in, in the rights landscape in Ireland. The old adage of follow the money might be an idea.
Governments handed over complete control to these organisations and therefore they handed Ireland to be used as an experiment in social change. Who stood for the people of Ireland, who stood with Ireland, certainly not Government who have betrayed the people and have taken the future of generations of the Irish people.
A mudguard for the government of the day.
It is quite infuriating when foreign settlers like Roja Fazaeli receive our tax money to tell us to destroy our own nationality.
Atlantic Philanthropies was set up by C Feeney with the best intentions. It has done some great work in supporting peace and the Good Friday Agreement and in supporting universities like NUIG. Sadly its direction has taken a very woke turn becoming more an activist rather than sponsoring organisation. Hence its support for gay marriage, abortion rights and the liberal agenda is to be lamented and not what I imagine was Feeney’s original vision
Accept the truth. You cannot accept a man of Irish descent could do anything bad. You think he must be good if he was Irish🤣🤣🤣 Trying to say his money was spent in ways he did not want. He would have legally stipulated exactly how it would be spent, to the last word. This money destroyed our country. Maybe a nationalist government would put an end to govt funding of this woke project and cut off its life. Indeed wipe out all woke. It is only a fringe cult.
Here a breakdown of fallacies in the comments alone, containing several assertions that could be misleading or misconstrued.
Claim: Chuck Feeney’s funds have been diverted from education to support “wokeism.” Fact: Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies has supported a wide range of causes, including education, human rights, and social equity initiatives globally. While the foundation has indeed supported progressive social causes, these are aligned with its broader mission to promote fairness, justice, and inclusion, and are not a deviation but a part of its intended scope of impact (Wikipedia).
Claim: NGOs are predominantly government-funded and serve as a “mudguard” for governmental agendas. Fact: While NGOs may receive funding from governments and private foundations like Atlantic Philanthropies, they operate independently and are not mere extensions of the government. Their funding sources are diverse and often include private donations, grants, and service fees, which they use to support various causes, not all of which may align directly with government policies.
Claim: Atlantic Philanthropies is solely responsible for significant changes in Irish social policies like gay marriage and abortion rights. Fact: These changes are the result of long-standing social movements within Ireland and reflect broader societal shifts. While funding from organizations like Atlantic Philanthropies may have supported advocacy efforts, suggesting that such changes are due solely to external influence overlooks the domestic support and activism that drove these changes.
Claim: NGOs funded by foreign entities like Atlantic Philanthropies operate without public scrutiny or accountability. Fact: NGOs, particularly those involved in significant policy areas, are subject to public and governmental scrutiny, especially if they receive public funding. Moreover, there are regulations and compliance requirements that NGOs must follow, which include financial disclosures and activity reports to maintain their nonprofit status.
Total tripe.
There is NO democratic scrutiny of NGOs. By the Dail? Are you nuts?
Feeney was an impérialist, investing his money is a small country in order to change that country’s culture to his liking.
Not a penny did he give for the preservation of Irish language folklore and culture, research into Gaelic cultural and social history, human rights in Ireland when they were being flouted in the 1980s etc.
He is dead, but his wicked work lives on.
Happily we may be near throwing off the shackles of this and other anti-Irish wasters.
Not true again. Remarkable everything you claimed is untrue.
This article engages in what it does best – conflating information, like the receipt of funding with influence over personal or organizational decisions. Atlantic Philanthropies is known for its good work around the world and strategic support of projects that align with its goals of advancing human dignity and social equity, rather than imposing specific agendas on the recipients of its grants. Dr. Ciara Smyth is a well-regarded academic at NUIG, where she directs the Doctoral Programme in the School of Law with expertise in immigration law, human rights, and international law as well as appointed to significant roles, such as a member of the government’s Working Group on Asylum, reflecting her standing in the field.
Not true. Everything you’ve written in your comment is wrong.
Ofc it’s not true simply because it goes against your opinion and attitude. Reality hurts does it?