The Goal keeper

WHEN you ask John O'Shea to list his heroes, he reels off names such as Mother Teresa and Mary Robinson and you're not surprised.

But then he comes out with Michael Collins and you realise instantly the match is perfect.

You can see the attraction Collins is the ultimate boys' hero the swaggering swearing man of action, "a broth of a boy" to the mothers, yet undeniably appealing to younger women. A gong-ho, wisecracking bully who was ruthless in the name of high ideals, but pragmatic in the face of extreme difficulties.

O'Shea even shares some of the "Big Fella" looks of Collins and, like his hero, he hails from the south-west.

"He's a guy I'd love to have a pint with, my type of man, He'd tell me to piss off, and he'd tell me `yes' or `no'. He'd be an action-man, not a theorist, not someone who wants to sit around for three hours about something, but says `let's go'.

While Collins was slain at an early age, John O'Shea is still soldiering on in the cause of the Third World, his energy un-dimmed at a time when others would long since have thrown in the towel.

For 20 years now, O'Shea has been the director, main mover and sole public face of Goal, one of the largest Irish relief agencies and certainly the most controversial. He inspires tremendous loyalty among his staff, and has been the subject of fulsome tributes, most notably when an entire Late Late Show was devoted to his life's work.

But he has also been the focus of sustained and increasing attack. For years, critics muttered privately that he was aggressive, bullheaded, simplistic, even racist and sexist, but bit their tongue for fear of harming the business of fundraising for the Third World. More recently, though, disagreements have become public, as O'Shea has clashed openly with his opposite number in Trocaire and with Joan Burton, the Minister responsible for development, over Rwanda.

Controversy and criticism are no strangers to O'Shea, and he deals with them head on. Is it not simplistic to call, as he does on a regular basis, for troops to be sent in to "sort out" places like Zaire, or to declare that no "black" government can ever be trusted?

"If being simplistic is saying we should give the poor food and shelter, then I don't mind. All I know is that if they were my children. I'd be doing more for them than we are. But we're sending in arms and landmines [to Africa], we re supporting corrupt dictators, and they are not going to ensure that the poor of their own country get anything.

Is it not racist to assert that Africans can't run their own affairs? "No, look at this country; we need the Vincent de Paul, because our Government isn't able to look after all the interests of the poor. What has Africa produced? Leaders like Idi Amin, Milton Obote, Charles Taylor. Quite simply, the governments of the Third World have not shown they have a real interest in their poor. There's nothing racist or colonialist about this all we're interested in is getting aid to those who need it most."

Goal's withdrawal from Rwanda last autumn was hastily and clumsily organised, and left staff and the Rwandan authorities disillusioned. Volunteers complained of diktat by fax from Dublin, and a failure by headquarters to communicate adequately.

But O'Shea denies that any of his staff were left "high and dry". Those on long term contracts were "sorted out" in other countries, while others were coming to the end of their contracts anyway, he maintains.

Goal didn't have the money to continue its projects and ran the risk of going out of business if it didn't pull out, he explains.

"In any case, the needs weren't great in the country, there was no one dying, like they were in the refugee camps. And we weren't comfortable working with a government which had put 100,000 people in jail and was treating them like animals."

He bears an extraordinary personal animus towards the Rwandan government which he reckons, is getting a "free ride" because the international community feels guilty about not having intervened in the genocide.

O'Shea's heart lies with the Hutu refugees, many of them still in Zaire, the same people he saw suffering death and disease when they first fled Rwanda in 1994. Never mind that many of them were linked to the genocide O'Shea says agencies can't "play God" by choosing whom to help.

IT took just two weeks for the international community to respond to a white man's problem in Albania, he points out, but five months to deal with the remaining refugees in Zaire.

"When we were burying 3,500 people a day down in Goma, and it was front page news on every paper on earth, where were the UN, the World Bank, the government agencies? - nowhere, they were nowhere."

If mistakes were made, he puts these down to "growing pains".

"You have to think a lot on your feet in the Third World. You don't know whether the enemy is around the corner, whether it's safe to go down that road or whether it's landmined, or whether the people you're dealing with are as honest or progressive as you think. It's not an exact science."

"Doing the job" is what it's all about in O'Shea's book, and no one does the job better in his eyes than small non governmental organisations (NGOs) and missionaries.

"Governments dealing on a government to government level are doing the insane, because there is no way that money given to a Third World government - you can be certain - will ever reach the poor.

But Goal's relationship with our own Government has not been the happiest of late. Last year, the agency submitted 15 applications for co funding to the Department of Foreign Affairs, but got approval for only three projects. The overseas aid budget is rising rapidly, yet Goal's share is stuck at about 1.6 per cent of the £106 million spent last year.

O'Shea credits the Government's achievement in increasing the aid budget, but is scathing about how the money is used. "We deal with the poorest of the poor - the bureaucrats deal with different people - who want somewhere safe for their child to be born, or clean water. They don't want scholarships, or third level education, at this stage.

"I feel embarrassed and disappointed that I have a stream of missionaries coming in to me for help," he says, resorting to a military metaphor: "Here are the frontline troops having to beg for bullets.

"Meanwhile, we are actually doing the work; we're not holding conferences, or holding workshops, we're not in Beijing discussing what to do about women and achieving nothing, we're working with the poor and we're having to beg for bullets to fight this war. We have the expertise, we have the experience, so why can't we get from our own Government what we need to expand?"

You can see O'Shea's predicament. Trocaire have their collection boxes in every home during Lent, Concern has a well oiled corporate fundraising machine, but Goat relies mainly on O'Shea's persuasive armtwisting of sports stars, athletes, or anyone who strays in his path.

Our conversations in a Dublin hotel are frequently interrupted by his interrogations of passersby: "Have you fixed up that for me. "When are you coming on board?",

"We'll play that match soon". It seems half of Dublin has organised, or participated in, a Goal charity event.

But now O'Shea says he is "not happy" appealing to the Irish public all the time. In any case, the competition from the National Lottery and the absence of any great emergency on the scale of Somalia or Ethiopia is making it ever harder to squeeze money out of the public.

YET the man who has raised millions for the Third World over the past 20 years can still turn a trick. When a mobile phone wholesale replaced advertisements in the newspapers earlier this year offering the Irish rugby players bonuses in the (unlikely) event of them beating France, O'Shea spotted his opportunity. He was quickly on the radio, deploring this squandering of money and eventually shaming the wholesaler into coughing up £5,000 for Goal. The Irish team, needless to say, lost, and got nothing.

Asked for his opinion of Joan Burton, he throws a glance at my tape recorder and declines to comment. Later, however, he faxes in a statement: "Emma Bonino, the EU commissioner for humanitarian affairs, said recently that NGOs represented a unique way of ensuring that aid reaches those in greatest need. I would love to see Minister Burton share the views of Mrs Bonino rather than continue with a policy of pouring millions of taxpayers' money into the coffers of Third World governments or into the international agencies".

Having been a journalist - he spent over 20 years as a sports writer with the Irish Press - helps him separate "the important from the trivial". "When I see things like the Beijing conference I realise they're a joke, they're a disgrace; these things are all publicity gimmicks for the UN to camouflage the fact that they can't do the job. Journalists are also into urgency, so when I'm in a country and I see serious situations, I don't hold meetings about them, I try to make decisions when I'm there.

O'Shea sees himself as a Kerryman, where his bank manager father came from, but he grew up in various parts of the country - Cork Charleville, West port. A sports fanatic, he describes himself as "one of, these guys who was reasonable at everything and very good at nothing".

With each description, he puffs himself up, then lets the air out. He was a basketball international at 18, "but probably the worst ever to play for my country". He ran the fastest mile in Ireland for a 17 year old, but got an injury. He played senior rugby for Blackrock and was a good placekicker "but when it came to the big stage I hadn't got it".

So instead of following his sporting dreams, he took a job as a clerk in a coal yard, for £8 a week. He rose to become a sales manager, at the same time as studying history. philosophy and economics by night.

In his last year in college. he asked Tim Pat Coogan. a family friend. if there were any vacancies in journalism. Coogan told him to put his many views on sport down on paper and gave him a job shortly afterwards.

For more than 15 years, he combined his, journalism with his work in Goal, starting, at 7.30 a.m. in the newspaper before moving on to the agency's offices in the afternoon. It was a hectic life which frequently took him away from his wife, Judy, and their four children, but he says his only regret now is having stayed in journalism so long.

Goal currently - has over 40 volunteers overseas, well down on 1994, when over a hundred "Goalies" were working through out the Third World. The biggest operation is in Angola, but the agency also maintains a presence in Sudan, Ethiopia, India, Philippines, Vietnam, Mozambique, Kenya and Bosnia. If Goal has a speciality, it is dealing with street children, the unwanted by product of massive and messy urbanisation in many developing countries.

O'Shea's admiration for his young volunteers is unbounded. "We've a very comfortable lifestyle in Ireland, it's a great place to live, so for a person to give up a year or two of their life to work in the slums of Calcutta... bow they do this is beyond me.

"In comparison, mine is a bobby's job. I just walk in, spend a week, look around, say `aw, you're great' and walk out."

"I'm probably being racist when I say this, but I find that when I'm with the poor of the Third World I'm with the happiest people I ever met in my life. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to sit in a slum in Calcutta, or a street children's project in Addis and to play with the kids.

"Not once in 20 years of going around schools in the Third World has a child ever put up his hand and asked for something for himself. They've always said something like they want a chair for the teacher, chalk for the board, something to stop the rats or the rain coming in. They'd teach us a lot."

IN O'Shea's credo, "if you're physically and mentally fit, you have a moral obligation to help those in greatest need, The poor are the poor, no matter whether, they're black, white, yellow or what, whether they're in Ballyfermot or Ballydehob. Any one of us could need help tomorrow, any of us could have been, born a peasant in Peru or a refugee in Africa.

"I'm only trying to do something late in my life, because I did feck all for anyone for most of it. I was just your ordinary egotistical young whippersnapper who wanted to play rugby for Ireland and football for Kerry. As long as you are trying, as long as your intentions are good and right, some good will come out of it. I'm convinced of that."

The interview ends because O'Shea has a game of tennis booked in Fitzwilliam. "I'm on court across the road against a wealthy fella I'm hoping to get money off," he says, bounding out of the foyer, sports bag in hand.