This vividly instructive book, at once a presentation of the history of Concern and an exploration of its developing philosophies and policies, a cross between a thriller and a position paper. . . is as informative as it is inspirational. Tony Farmar has a gift for wise generalization, a wonderful instinct for the telling detail or revealing statistic and a fair way of letting different personalities reveal themselves and the values they espouse. This is no dutiful in-house paean by an organisation to its own virtues. It is a window on the times we have lived through, often heart lifting, as often heartbreaking. Séamus Heaney

'An absorbing read' RTE Guide

Tony Farmar achieves something remarkable here . . . an excellent book' Irish Economic & Social History, 2003

This is a fascinating book about an extraordinary organization' Garret FitzGerald

One of the great merits of Tony Farmars account of Concerns first thirty years is to capture richly, even grippingly in places, the crucial dimensions of his story.

Tony Farmar achieves something remarkable here, for his work encompasses four very distinct perspectives, although he moves effortlessly between them. The first of these is what we should expect: an account of the evolution of Concern from its beginning in the horrors of the Biafran war in 1967-8, through to the organisation it is today, operating in over twenty-five countries.

The second perspective considers the historical, social and political contexts in many of the countries in which Concern has been active. The third sets a mirror on the donor country, Ireland, providing the Irish reader with a familiar, yet changing, frame of reference. The fourth considers the evolution of die global theoretical framework informing development strategy and practice.

The Holy Ghost Fathers in Nigeria, their extended families and others were moved to respond to die acute humanitarian needs resulting from Biafras failed attempt to secede. Although, from the start, the Concern leadership was predominately Catholic, it espoused an interdenominational character. Nonetheless, the organisation was deeply influenced by a selfless missionary zeal which, by the early nineties, had become anachronistic in its benevolent authoritarianism. The author captures well the tension of such shifts within the Concern culture which reflected shifts in Irish society in general.

He analyses critical management challenges such as a serious deficit in the accounts in 1977, the uncovering of the Tarbett embezzlement scandal six years later, and a determined move towards rigorous strategic planning in 1997. In setting the scene for the beginnings in Nigeria, Farmar pulls various strands together: David Livingstones civilising mission in Africa, the arrival of the French Holy Ghost Fathers in Ireland (both in the 1850s) and the origins of ethnic tensions in Nigeria. He gives evidence that the activism in which Concern engaged was welcomed by officialdom neither in Nigeria nor in Ireland. Similarly, in the case of Bangladesh, Farmar outlines the demise of British India, the split of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, and the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan with consequent flows of refugees. It was in this volatile context that Concern first became involved in Asia. In Ethiopia, after reading of the oldest Christian country in Africa, the almost feudal regime of Haile Salassie followed by Mengistus brutal Derg and emerging separatist movements in Tigray and Eritrea, we can appreciate the emergence of famine which attracted Concerns attention in the mid-seventies and again less than a decade later.

Farmar draws attention repeatedly to the evolving situation in Ireland during these thirty years. In the mid-sixties, Catholicism was undergoing the radical transformations of the Second Vatican Council with particular reference to serving the poorest of the poor and recasting the traditional missionary role; at the same time, Irish government and diplomatic circles were cautious and conservative. With the gradual secularisation of Irish society, the interaction between church and state and society at large had changed utterly, and Concern adapted to these changes but not without difficulty.

From the point of view of development theory and practice, Farmar presents Concern as a very interesting case study in an Irish setting. From the early days, Concern debated the complex triad of human rights, government and aid. In the late eighties, as new ideas about development emerged, reports were published challenging Concern on many fronts including its compliance with governments oppressive policies (those of Sudan, for example), its ambiguity of emphasis on emergency or development activities, the lack of professional formation amongst volunteers, and failure to promote the emergence of indigenous leadership (in Bangladesh, for example). Yet, by the end of the nineties, Concern had wrestled with these challenges, and new and appropriate leadership, policy and practice emerged.

In his epilogue, Farmar sums up optimistically the impact of Concern over its first thirty years: Concerted effort focussed on specific circumstances can improve lives. This simple statement belies the extraordinary effort of the organisation in its growing years, an effort which has been as fruitful as it has been courageous. Farmars excellent book (with almost 150 footnotes) provides ample justification for this epigram.

There was a remarkably rapid mutation in twentieth-century Irelands relations with Africa, from its being a rich source of missionaries to being a secular champion of Africa in its times of need and a source of development aid.

Missionary numbers were peaking in the 1960s, yet by the end of the 1980s aid and development, xvhether resourced by government or by voluntary agencies, had become the most visible side of Irelands involvement in sub-Saharan Africa.

There was of course a direct connection, or rather many complex links, between the missionary story and what came after. Tony Farmers study of Concern is probably the best available to illuminate this evolutionary process. The book focuses on one facet of the story but one that is an intrinsically important part. Having written a number of histories of other Irish institutions and businesses, Farmar was a very good choice for what is a commissioned history, with his knowledge of how complex organisations have recently evolved, a sharp eye for telling detail, and a clear desire to record failure as well as success. In approaching this history, he was obviously fascinated to see how an organisation based on voluntary initiative and the swings of public mood was able to become professional, international and-most of the time-highly successful.

These organisational questions, and the one or two crises in the internal history of Concern, are duly documented, but it is the intrinsic social importance of the organisation in Ireland and Africa and the extraordinary commitment that it inspired that mark out the book. Farmars skills as a historian disguise the considerable difficulty of his task, but he manages to weave together the somewhat uneven documentary evidence of the organisation with the oral evidence from interviews he carried out with past and present Concern members to create a very lively account.

Concern began as a response to the gathering crisis in eastern Nigeria in 1967-8, when the breakaway state of Biafra was becoming a huge refugee camp, embracing an area where the Irish Holy Ghost Fathers had been exceptionally active over the previous 60 years. With a network of priests and parish churches across the stricken Igbo region, the order was in a position to distribute food and medicine, but the logistics and the politics of getting aid into the Biafran enclave were enormously problematic. Africa Concern (as it was then known) rose to the challenge: it emerged as a mainly lay organisation because of the difficulty the hierarchy had in supporting an emergency appeal that might alienate the federal Nigerian authorities.

The OLoughlin Kennedy family and many others led Concern in its heroic phase, and indeed guaranteed that it would retain its de facto Catholic yet unofficial character for more than a decade. During this time it lengthened its agenda and changed its areas of action. The Catholic bishops organisation, Trocaire, eclipsed it in the 1970s, but by the 1980s Concern, with its activities in three continents and a support base moving outside Ireland, became a larger and far more influential player.

Concerns interventions outside Africa, most notably in Bangladesh, Yemen and Cambodia, reveal the organisations indomitable versatility, but it has always been an African-focused aid and development organisation, appointing field directors in no less than eleven African countries between 1973 and 1995. And of particular interest in Farmars account is Concerns repeated role in Ethiopia, being first to alert the BBCs Jonathan Dimbleby to the awful 1973 famine that brought the old regime down, and a decade later trying to get international media to recognise the return of famine to the Marxist Ethiopia, some six months before Mohammed Amin and Michael Buerk awoke the worlds conscience with another BBC expose.

The soft influence of the churches in this story is everywhere evident, symbolised by the extraordinary service of the Finucane brothers (Father Aengus was director from 1981 to 1997). But against this are the stories of numerous volunteers and professionals motivated by a sense of social justice that was not ostensibly religious but influenced nonetheless by the missionary legacy that had helped to create the space for Irish interventions in Africa.

Seamus Heaney describes this book as a cross between a thriller and a position paper. Thankfully, it is closer to the former in its presentation of the strongly held views and the constant risks that underpin the organisation. The early chapters set out Concerns origins in the Biafra crisis when the establishment of the then Africa Concern in 1968 was an expression of the Irish peoples solidarity with victims of the Nigerian famine. Farmar notes that Concerns ship of aid provisions was only the fourth to land supplies into the starving region of Biafra. Parish networks, both Catholic and Protestant, provided the framework for the successful delivery of aid in Biafra. Over two decades later, Farmar comments, the lack of such a pre-existing network made aid efforts much less effective in Somalia. Concerns missionary roots had plenty of nourishment from the over 7,000 priests, brothers and nuns (and some laity) in Asia, Africa and Latin America, particularly the Holy Ghost Fathers. The huge contribution made by the Kennedys (who led the organisation from 1968-1976) and subsequently by the Finucane brothers is well documented. Farmar is not shy about exploring controversial and contested aspects of their leadership.

The book charts the evolution of Concern from a small humanitarian organisation, founded by an inspired and charismatic leadership to a multi-million euro, multi donor supported development agency. In the 30-year period 1968-98 total expenditure amounted to over £325 million. Farmar draws the reader into a world of strong debates, organisational divides, institutional restructuring, personal challenges and of course immense personal commitment. He captures the excitement of emergency work from the earliest days of Concern. The names of Concerns 1,600 expatriate volunteers, many of whom in recent years are no longer Irish, are listed in the appendix. Farmar notes that, while the impulse driving these expatriate volunteers can be made to seem naive, even patronising; it was certainly unselfish and brave. At the same time Concern has employed many thousands of local staff in its various field operations, and in more recent years staff from operational countries have had the opportunity to work in other field offices.

The difficulties encountered in striking a balance between humanitarian/ emergency work and more long-term development work as well as between these areas of intervention and advocacy work to tackle the root causes of poverty is a recurring theme in the book. Over time as development agencies have come more institutionalised, an inevitable and one could say necessary bureaucracy sets in, with its numerous rules, procedures and regulations, which in turn must answer to numerous stakeholders including official donors. In this setting, finding the best balance between action and accountability is never easy. The book doesn't fudge tensions between head office and field offices thousands of miles away and cites letters and minutes of meetings to this effect. The minutes of many Concern meetings and reports provide considerable detail of what went on and capture the feelings at the core of discussions. An interesting, albeit somewhat unique, example being the debate and vote held back in the 1980s on keeping or removing the Sacred Heart statue on a plinth between the two central first floor windows of the then Concern office. The statue remained. It was subsequently removed by a hotel company, which took over the building in 1995.

Farmar traces the strong competition for public donations between Trocaire and Concern back to the early days of both organisations. From 1971 onwards, the appointment of Concern field-directors, starting with Fr. Raymond Kennedy in India, "implied a commitment to development of a particular country well beyond the initial crisis" (by 2001 Concern had 27 field offices). Farmar describes a meeting between Concern and the newly founded Trocaire in April 1974 when Bishop Casey "did his best to keep Concern in the emergency box". Only a year old, Trocaire, as the official development agency of the Catholic Bishops, was already denting Concerns ability to finance its commitments.

The strong financial position of Concern today contrasts sharply with periods of financial uncertainly where income fell below expenditure. In 1982 news broke of financial misappropriation involving a former Chief Executive. While most of the money was recovered, it fell to Fr. Aengus Finucane, newly appointed Chief Executive, to turn round Concerns finances and to reinvigorate public support for the agency. Farmar notes that his strong leadership may well have saved Concern from total demise. Only two years later, in 1984, donations to Concern broke all records, almost quadrupling in a single year, in response to the appalling famine in Ethiopia. While this massive income expansion was emergency driven, in recent years Concern has had major success in ending its dependency on emergencies for public donations. By 2002 over 100,000 supporters had committed to regular giving by standing order.

This is a fascinating book about an extraordinary organisation-CONCERN-the origins of which go back thirty-five years. I happen to remember how it all started because John O Loughlin Kennedy-whom I know as Loughlin and others know as Lockie-was at that time working with me in a company I had founded earlier in the 1960s, the Economist Intelligence Unit of Ireland. We had known each other since childhood-I having spent the year 1935-36 with him and his siblings in Colaiste na Rinne, and having subsequently enjoyed the warm hospitality of their parents home in Mount Merrion.

When the Biafra War broke out in Nigeria Lougojn and I both became emotionally engaged with that tragic event-I only peripherally, but he and his wife Kay and elder brother Raymond, deeply so. Loughlins engagement with Biafra soon turned into an absorbing commitment with the needs of the developing world, so much so that he eventually left the EIU of Ireland to become engaged full-time in running Africa Concern with his brother Raymond, who had been my closer contemporary at Ring College.

Within months of starting the Biafra aid project the Kennedy family and their friends had decided to continue their work in Africa even after that War ended-and so they did, although within a couple of years they had decided to extend their work further afield to other continents, starting with Bangladesh, and thus dropped the word "Africa" from their title.

But there's no point in my reciting the history of Concern-most of you know it far better than I do.

Several conclusions can be drawn from this book, however.

First, the extraordinary impact that individuals with a sense of purpose, commitment, or mission, can sometimes have on the world around them. It is humbling to think of the countless lives that were saved which would otherwise have been lost, simply because the Kennedys and their friends chose 35 years ago to take this initiative, and because what they then started eventually attracted many hundred-several thousand, indeed, I would judge by the pages of acknowledgments at the end of the book-generous-hearted and courageous people, most of them young at the time when they became involved-to serve the needs of the most deprived and miserably situated people in three continents.

But from this book we also learn of the human problems, and at times strong disagreements, that seem inevitably to arise within many voluntary bodies dedicated to public service. In its time Concern has indeed experienced great internal difficulties, from which, however, it has emerged each time with a renewed commitment to the cause it has sought to serve.

Of course, I knew something of these crises at the time they arose, but through reading this book-which does not dodge these issues but handles them, it seems to me, openly but sympathetically-I now have a better understanding of those events.

What I did not realise, however, was that my decision as Minister for Foreign Affairs to found APSO would be seen by some in Concern as "a vote of no confidence in Concern by the powers that be". That was certainly not my intention! And I do not now recall whether I heard at the time of the vigorous exchange of correspondence between CONCERN and APSO that is referred to in the book!

What emerges most clearly of all from this book, however, is the quite extraordinary dedication and courage of so many Irish people who risked, and sometimes lost their lives in the service of others, working much of the time in appalling conditions, weighed down by the human misery all around them.

I have always had a sense of guilt that I never played any part in this kind of work. I did in fact once contemplate doing so after I lost political office. Would I in fact have done so if my wife Joan had not been disabled and recurrently ill? I am not sure that I would have had the kind of courage that so many other Irish people have shown. It is only when one thinks in such personal terms that one begins to realises just how extraordinary has been the commitment of those who have served with Concern, or with other parallel agencies such as Trocaire or Gorta, or through APSO, amongst the poorest of this world living in the most extreme conditions.

"They are doing our country proud," said Mary Robinson of the Concern voices she has come across, working around the world. They began in 1968, in the aftermath of a civil war, which is where Tony Farmar begins his history of the organisation. The crucible where Concern was forged was Nigeria, at a time when there were-incredibly-2,500 Irish missionaries in that country. Some of the priests and their relatives in Ireland were politicised by the war in Biafra: the outcome was Africa Concern, which grew into the worldwide agency we know, respect, and assist today.

This book is a genuine historical assessment of that organisation, its personnel, its codes, achievements, troubles, all set in context. Its an absorbing read-this perhaps beyond expectation-and does justice to a large number of people, who, as Concern patron Seamus Heaney notes in his introduction, keep delivering their own answer to the big question: to what end are we here on earth together?

From its early beginnings in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Biafran war in 1968, Concern had by 1993 become an organisation with a staff of 4,600 working in twelve of the worlds poorest countries (by 1998 Concern was in nineteen countries) and an annual budget of over £30 million. These bald facts are remarkable in themselves but far more remarkable are the struggles, the fierce debates, the courage, the determination and the idealism which spurred this growth. One of the great merits of Tony Farmars account of Concerns first thirty years is to capture richly, even grippingly in places, these crucial dimensions of his story.

Given Concerns stature and profile in todays Ireland, it is easy to forget just how novel was the response out of which it was born. Now we are accustomed to the existence of a diverse sector of development non-governmental organisations (NGOs) whose activities are widely known among the population. Concern was very much a pioneer in this field, having to learn as it went along and with no clear model to follow. What kept it going was its ability (or more accurately the ability of some of its leading figures such as Fr Raymond Kennedy, Frs Aengus and Jack Finucane, Mike McDonagh and Dominic MacSorley) to respond with immense generosity and imagination to many of the worlds great humanitarian disasters over this time. Their practical idealism sparked a like idealism in so many people who volunteered to give of their services often in unbelievably harsh conditions.

This book is particularly good in describing this wider context. Biafra, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda have all entered the history of the late twentieth century as evidence of the barbarity human beings are capable of inflicting on their neighbours, and of the human cost of the environmental damage done by our industrial consumerist civilisation. Yet this book shows that such extreme horrors also motivated extreme responses which helped save lives, re-establish communities, foster sustainable use of the soil and give back hope where it had been lost. Often these dimensions are forgotten in the larger picture which makes this account an important contribution to telling the full story.

But if the focus is on the work done by Concern staff, volunteer workers and thousands of local staff, the book does not avoid the many internal battles on management, on direction and on funding, nor the tensions that at times were evident between the workers in the field and head office in Dublin. Some of these were very serious and brought the organisation to the brink of collapse. A fundamental tension covered in the book concerns the difference between emergency relief and long-term development work. Apart from the value to local people of the approach adopted, over-dependence on emergency relief led to sudden increases and decreases in income in response to particular emergencies. For example, its income in 1994 soared to £45 million as donors responded generously to the Rwanda crisis; the following year this had fallen to £30 million.

Managing an organisation of this type was a particular challenge. Yet, of course, Concern tended to attract idealists rather than efficient managers. Another tension that emerged early on relates to the dilemma of whether it is better to publicise governments abuses or to keep quiet for the sake of being allowed work with their victims. Concerns survival and growth amid these many tensions is another and less acknowledged aspect of its remarkable story. Farmar does not shirk from giving us the details of its difficult experiences, though he does in places show a tendency to side with the organisation against its critics.

While many non-Irish have worked for Concern, both as volunteers and most especially as staff locally recruited in the many countries where it works, the story of Concern is also part of the story of modern Ireland. Together with Trocaire, it is largely responsible for helping establish a vibrant sector of Irish society actively connected to and involved in the fate of far-flung nations and their peoples. This book, with a Foreword by Seamus Heaney, opens us to a microcosm of an Ireland we can all be proud of.

Seamus Heaney describes this short book about the work of Irelands humanitarian aid agency as follows: "This is no dutiful, in-house paean by an organisation to its own virtues. It is a window on to the times we have lived through, often heart lifting, as often heartbreaking." The story Tony Farmar tells is something to be proud of-now we can afford to help in places "that often lie equidistant from the Gap of Danger and the Slough of Despond" as Seamus Heaney remarks-and we are free to decide when, where, how much and how to do it.