PRESIDENT OBAMA has appointed Dan Hynes, the outgoing comptroller of the state of Illinois, and Stella O’Leary, the president of the Irish-American Democrats political action committee, as his observer and alternate observer to the International Fund for Ireland (IFI).
The IFI was established by the Irish and British governments in 1986 to promote dialogue between nationalists and unionists. It is financed by the US, EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The US contributed $15 million (€11 million) to the fund last year.
Mr Hynes is from a prominent Irish-American family in Chicago and is close to Mr Obama. Ms O’Leary emigrated from Dublin to the US 40 years ago and became involved in the Northern Ireland peace process during the Clinton administration.
When secretary of state Hillary Clinton was a US senator from New York, funding for the IFI was “a darling project of hers”, said O’Leary, who worked with Clinton to sustain funding throughout the Bush administration. “She saw how much the fund helped women in Northern Ireland. It fits perfectly into her diplomatic philosophy,” O’Leary explained.
The IFI’s website defines its mission as “to tackle the underlying causes of sectarianism and violence and to build reconciliation between people and within and between communities throughout the island of Ireland.” Current programmes focus on areas where there has been dissident activity.
The fund meets several times a year, alternating between Dublin and Belfast. Observers are not remunerated, but their travel expenses are paid. Aside from the ambassador to Dublin, theirs are the only specifically Irish posts filled by the president. It is possible they may be involved in organising a presidential visit.
When O’Leary recently asked Vice-President Joe Biden – whose late mother was from Donegal – when he would visit Ireland, Mr Biden replied: “I asked the president to send me to Ireland and the president said, ‘I’ll go there first’.”
“I would be very surprised if [Obama] didn’t go before the next election [in 2012],” Ms O’Leary said.
Irish-American representatives and senators are expected to fight an attempt by the Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz to de-fund the IFI on the grounds it has outlived its usefulness. “It’s my intention to come to the floor and stand in the well of the House and offer a stand-alone Bill to strike funding for the International Fund for Ireland,” Mr Chaffetz told the Irish Echo earlier this month.
