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Title : standard furniture việt nam
standard furniture việt nam
this man's generosity has transformed thelives of millions throughout the world and in ireland. yet very few people wouldrecognize him or know what he has done. astonishing. i can't say i've everencountered such an extraordinary individual. complex. he certainly always wanted to play fair but he wanted to play tough. odd. a conversation with chuck feeney is unlike any other conversation you’ll have with anyone on earth.
paradoxical. when the history comes to be written, it will be shownthat chuck feeney did have a significant impact on ireland. inspiring. he inspired us to think big. spiritual. chuck feeney, and you probably heard this from a whole lot of other people, is a totally one-off. compassionate. he’ll know more about you in twentyminutes than you’d ever know about him. oh i think
i think the man is a saint. this is the remarkable story of a manwho had it all, but realized it wasn’t enough. chuck feeney has led an extraordinary life. he became one of the wealthiest men onthe planet but throughout his life has chosen toremain outside the glare of the media spotlight. for over twenty five years hiscontribution to ireland both economically and politically has beenmonumental, yet
until recently it went undocumented. now in his late seventies he's telling hisstory in the hope that others will be inspiredas he was. it begins in the depression era ofnineteen thirties america. charles francis feeney was bornin nineteen thirty one into a small irish american community in newjersey. this was the time of the great depression and both his parents worked hard to give their kids a good start in life.
i went to a school in an irish american neighborhood, and it was a catholic school and we felt we were part of that community. chuck’s mother madeline had a strong sense ofdoing right by the less fortunate. she worked nights as a volunteer redcross nurse and for her, there was no one quitelike her only son.
he could do things with a straightface and he could get away with it because he was “my charles†as far as my mother was concerned he could commit no sins.she was a good woman, clearly and she would just consider it as an obligation to help your neighbors. when you live in a family like that, that she was very very concerned about our neighbors i think that rubs off on you, you are concerned about people.
you had already been involved in a few money-makingschemes, i mean you had an eye to making a buck. yeah, the typical things that kids do, mow the lawns, do odd jobs for neighbors, i particularly recalla friend of mine whose name was moose foley and i partnered with him because he was thebiggest guy in the class. when we’d go out to shovel snow, i’d be the frontman, i’d go to sign up the places we had to shovel and i’d whistle for moose, and he’d come over and start shoveling and i’d start selling again.
moose foley did most of the shoveling, i know that because my father used to say to himyou’re a real conniver, you’re always thinking. after leaving school, he joined the air force and wasstationed in japan as a radio operator during the korean war. one of the benefits of his militaryservice as he well knew, was the right to a free education afterwards. “veteran’s administration officers have beenset up in every state, and it’s here the ex-soldier goes if he wants to continue his education under the gi bill of rights.†“you mean he can get any kind of education he wants?â€
“now you're getting the idea.†chuck feeney, the kid from a blue-collarnew jersey town aimed high. he applied, and was accepted into therespected ivy-league university of cornell. the first in his family ever to go tocollege. the grant from the gi bill didn't leavechuck much extra and it wasn't long before he startedlooking around for money-making opportunities. i saw this guy
coming around selling sandwiches and i saw how the students flocked down to buy a sandwich, and so i said, i can do that, that'snot difficult and so i became a self-made sandwich man. it was at cornell that he met a group of men who would later play vital roles in his business life. the most influential of all
was a young new yorker studying law. i thought he was selling sandwiches with too much bread and too little peanut butter. he was clearly an entrepreneur. his cornell experience was i thinkfor him transformative and he not only enjoyed the experienceand the people, but tremendously enjoyed the friendships and he always had this sense ofgratitude
and therefore as part of hisoverall view that it's good to give back. following his graduation in hotelmanagement he traveled to france to continue hiseducation, a decision which would change his life forever. well, that’s playing the hands that you’re dealt and i wasn’t quite sure which cards i would be dealt but i was always thinking about ways
of making a buck by working myself as opposed to working for somebody. in nineteen fifty six there were fifty ships of the us sixthfleet in the mediterranean alone each of the thirty thousand servicemenwas entitled to buy liquor tax free and chuck was quick to spot a goodbusiness opportunity. i was in a bar and i ran into anenglishman
who was just starting up a business of selling liquor to the naval ships.he sent me down to athens i got down there and they told me that the visit of the shipshad been canceled. using my innate intelligence i spotted a couple of hookers and asked them if they knew when the ships were comingand they knew exactly the day. i stayed on for two weeks
and then i started my career selling liquor to the ships. chuck the ex-gi and his partner hadfound the perfect business. no set up capital and cash up front. we were buying something for fiveplus the transport cost and selling it for almost fifteen i looked at the market and said if it's good for the military it must begood for the tourists
so we started doing the same thingselling them gallon packages of liquor i said, if you can sell liquor, why can't you sell perfume and so we sortof expanded our range of products. as thesales to the tourists continued chuck realized that there was a new marketopening up with the military. and then we got so many requests forautomobiles he said well we ought to get into the automobile business and germanywas a natural because at that time there were about two hundred and fifty thousand military in germany with dependents
and so that was when the business was started there in frankfurt in the summer of nineteen sixty four. you had an immediate sense that there wasalmost ingenious with this fellow, just his focus on life, his focus on the business definitely what do they say, type apersonality for sure. walked quickly, talked quickly, worked incessantly things were looking up as the sale of cars,alcohol and perfumes continued but chuck and his team were in for ashock. back in new york they brought in an old college friend toadvise them on a tax issue.
we did reorganize the businesses, and wereorganized them so that the tax risk was eliminated. the bad news is that they weren’t making money but they didn't know it. well when i arrived in new york it wasclearly a mess. it couldn’t be described any other way. there was no accounting systems
it took not very long to conclude that the liabilities exceeded the assets by approximately one million six hundred thousanddollars. we got involved in businesses too quickly, before we knew it we were subject to cutthroat competition. if you
fail honestly you don’t go to jail, if you faildishonestly you do go to jail. cash flow was tremendous and people paid very early forthe costs so everybody looked at this money in the bank as profit, as it were. there were no expense controls of any sort,people spent money as they saw fit and it resulted in an enormous deficit
we were very lucky if we justgot it out of debt and closed it down and moved on to something else. the business was in serious trouble and the new team of chuck feeney alan parker bob miller and tony pillaro had no choice but to pay their debts andmove on but an opportunity was just around thecorner
which was soon to make them one of themost successful business partnerships in the world. the concept of the airport duty freeshops was not new. in fact, the very first duty free shopwas opened in shannon in nineteen forty six but in the early sixties internationaltravel was still confined to the privileged few and large profits fromduty free sales were unimagined. concessions to run the shops weregranted by each government to the highest bidder.
a friend of ours wrote to us to tell about a shop that was going to open up at thehonolulu international airport and there would be the concession to sell any kind of duty free merchandise youwanted. we bid about a hundred and twenty five thousand guaranteed over five years and in no time at all we were doing a giant amount of business. chuck was always the mostoptimistic because he was a visionary
he could see what was going tohappen i was just looking at the figuresand adding them up, i could see them growing but chuck clearly was the visionary. with the olympic games of nineteen sixtyfour the japanese government was keen topresent a more liberal image the world. japanese citizens were allowed to travelabroad in greater numbers and the most popular destination washonolulu in hawaii. chuck’s instincts are sensational and his competitiveness and tenacity are amazing.
he's also completely focused so whenever there was an opportunity tomake a change, big or small, to improve the business chuck would often see it. as we explored the japanese market we realized thatthey were keen to buy bargains and we would sell a bottle of johnny walker black labelat that stage for about seven dollars a bottle, it cost them in japan
thirty five dollars a bottle, so it was a bargain. so you had this frenzy, the same was true of perfume, the same wastrue of cigarettes, they were buying for ten percent of what theycould buy them for in japan and in many cases you couldn’t even findthe product in japan. it was very obvious then that this was abusiness that had great potential and i think the one thing thatshould be indicated about chuck is that he had the foresight and he hadthe vision. the best descriptive word for that is
lucky because you know if you want to pick an emerging market pick one that people want, need, and get value from and all of things that we did qualified. one of the rules that the businessadopted early on and for which i was appointed the policeman was
quiet actually anonymity and at least in chuck’s case was adesire to stay out of the limelight the more you advertise yoursuccess and bragged about it the more likely it is that you were going toattract both jealousy and competition. with the incoming seven forty sevens, itjust changed the business dramatically overnight, the lid literally blew off. some of the first years i was there i think we're doing like
ten million dollars a year at theairport and the downtown store during its heydaywould do a million dollars a day it was just mind-boggling,we were just trying to make a buck and that seemed like a good way to make a buck. it was an exciting time, every day itwas like getting up for the kickoff because it was always something very dramatic and very exciting about it. we drank a lot of champagne, we drank a lot ofeverything but
when you worked hard, you worked hard and when we played, we played hard as well. what was the bonus for you at that stage? was it the business or themaking money, or both? i guess it was the success of business we started with nothing and now look whatwe've got. the money began to grow pretty quicklyand i would say by the early seventies the profits were rolling up veryquickly by that time it was more than a single duty-free shop, they had bid elsewhere, and they were the largest duty-freeretailer in the world.
i think by the late seventies they had five or six thousand employees, thevolume by that time was three billion dollars a year or so and because of the structure thathad been put in place virtually all of those profits were tax-free. i grew up
with my parents having these parties andhaving a grand ol’ time, we were the house where people came, and had barbecues and had parties and people always came with their kids, it was always kids and adults parties. i enjoyed what i did, i enjoyed particularly the people that i worked with i was always thinking that i don't need another milliondollars.
but as the profits rolled in and the fourpartners reveled in their multi-million-dollar lifestyles chuck began to realize the effects that great wealth could have, not only on him but also on his family. my dad was kicking us in the butt since we werefourteen, get out the door, do this yourself, figure it out. he was pushing us to be active and sporty
and tough. i felt that they should have the opportunity to see how money is earned they knew there was a difference between what you make and what you’re given. more than anything he wanted us to have goals and passions and he thought well, how could they have this, they’re born witheverything already. people have to fight and strive
so he made sure we did. i remember having a conversation withchuck and quoting to him which i can only do approximately the statement that the reverend gates made to john d rockefeller in which he said to rockefeller, “your wealth isrolling up, rolling up and if you don't do something about itit will crush you and crush your family.†and chuck kind of got that.
he is uncomfortable with displays of wealth and lavishness and i think that grew over time. i think there were times when he enjoyedentertaining people at some of the houses that the family then owned so i think there were things about it that he enjoyed but the growth of the
disquietude eventually outweighed the pleasure ofbeing able to entertain and bring people together. there's a halfway mark where we were living a certain life, my dad was fun at a party then i think things got a little bitmore serious with the amount of money and also an awareness, when you travel and see
how people suffer really you know it's not just an idea. i think life is a learning process andyou read books, you read stories, you empathize with people i’d always empathized with people who have it tough in life and theworld is full of people who don't get enough to eat. by nineteen eighty i started to thinkwhere is all this leading, what am i going to do with it
like many of the wealthy people today they have the money but wouldn’t be able to spend it if they started to spend it. it was the early eighties, and the decade ofgreed was well underway. while much of the world was consumed withmaking money chuck feeney decided he was going to dosomething completely different. it was the start of a journey whichwas to change his life
and the lives of many around him. i think because of his upbringing, ablue collar new jersey guy a guy in college who had to sell sandwiches toget through school is that when he started making these tremendous amounts of money he was almost embarrassed by it. he worked so hard to get there and once he did i think he found, i know he didn’t like these fancy dinners, and and he didn’t want to go
places that they were invited to, he was very low key. chuck doesn't own a car doesn't own a house has one pair of shoes and a fifteen dollar watch. i would be unhappy with myself if iwas wasting money on anything and that includes living
and so i get what i want from life and move on. he’s happy going out todinner and if he can get a good bottle of wine he's happy with that and sometimes even a better bottle of wine it's just that his personal style is notself-indulgent or lavish. i’m a guy who has
said that i could be happy with a grilled cheese and tomatosandwich. ecause he’d always insisted on remaininganonymous very few people had any idea just how much feeney was worth, not even his family. by now his fortune was estimated at arounda billion dollars and although no one knew he was secretly developing a radicalplan to give everything away. oh i think it was clear throughout thatthere would be a moment when virtually all
of the assets would be used forcharitable purposes we were never perfectly clear what virtuallyall meant because chuck didn’t want to impoverish his family but it was clear increasingly clear that he didn't want very much forhimself. did you not at any stage wonder yourself, am i going nuts, am i doing the right thing here? i suppose you always question business decisions and this was in effect atype of business decision. i warned him, a good lawyer is supposedto warn clients about risks and i said
you can’t change your mind onthis, once this is done, if the money is transferred, if the assets are transferred they’re gone and if you change your mind three dayslater you can't get them back and if you think you've made a mistake you can’t get themback and if things go awry you can't get them back it's irrevocable. are you sure you want to do this? there was no going back. no going back once we decided. i think he actually was impatient with thatbecause he’d made up his mind and thought it was
fine, he said, yeah, let’s get on with it. chuck feeney, the man who had worked his whole life tobuild a business empire was about to change everything with the stroke of a pen. in november nineteen eighty two having made a relatively modestprovision for his family, he signed over his entire fortune to his new foundation the atlantic philanthropies.
i got a phone call one day from him and he said i have a big announcement, and he said i just wanted you to know that i've given everything away and i said you mean every penny and he said i’ve given it all away to afoundation and i said oh, well that’s good if that’s what you want to do! i mean i'm really proud
of my dad i think he's just really anextraordinary man i mean honestly, who does this? i was surprised i will admit, but i knew that he didn’t do it without having given a lot of thought to itand the irish expression “there's no pockets in shrouds,†well i think he just came to thatrealization said, ok, i'm going to change what i'm doing. well i guess it gets down to a realization that
it doesn't add anything to your life as they say, it may make life a bit more comfortable for you but i’m not uncomfortable today. from now on all of chuck feeney’s multi-million dollarprofits from the duty-free business would be paid directly
into atlantic philanthropies. his next destination was a small poor, underdeveloped country on the edge of europe. i’m kind of a plastic paddy. an irish-american is a person whoseorigins are irish and my grandmother was from fermanagh i guess i qualify as an irish-american becausei’ve been involved in
a number of things that were to do with ireland in my adult years. when feeney arrived in ireland in theearly nineteen eighties the country was in the grip of a desperate recession. unemployment and immigration were at record levels there was little investment in industry oureducation things were bleak. he had begun routinely spending time inireland and doing what he always does, he
goes to someplace and he walks around and he sniffs around and he talks to people and it’s this entrepreneurial seeking mode. feeney had had firsthand experience ofthe benefits of education and he quickly spotted a real need in ireland. irish education had not kept pace and i just had the experience in my life of realizing that it's with educatedpeople that you can achieve more
and so we wanted to reinforce the the structures of the universities. one of the cities in ireland in mostneed of investment in third level education was limerick. the people of limerick had been campaigning fora university for years. ed walsh, the young head oflimerick’s existing national institute had big ambitions to convert it from asmall campus into a top-level university. the odds
were stacked against him. the thing about chuck feeney is that helikes the underdog and limerick was the underdog. first of all, limerick is physically a little bit separate from other places and the institution was a newinstitution which was bucking the trend, ed walsh was introducing new thinkinginto a rather stultified higher education system in ireland and was not welcomed forthat. those are the sort of people that chuck feeney likes. mavericks.
a very unassuming man on a first encounter just because he dressed so badly and was so self-effacing a very ordinary kind of guy he couldhave stepped off a tractor in county clare and when he came into my office in limerick,most americans would have a quick encounter and someone would take them away and see the building, this man had read and he wasprofoundly knowledgeable
about ireland and it’s predicamentand the trouble and the potential so something clicked. we did a lot of bricks and mortar at the verybeginning because some of the things that we wanted to dofor example here in ireland were going to require buildings at universities, student accommodation libraries and that sort of stuff chuck says, look, you’ve got one chance to do something extremely well
the country does not have a purpose designed concert hall why don't we bring in the bestdesigner we can, i know one in new york he flew in and we’ll design a world class concerthall that ireland can be proud of and the university can be proud of by the way you can design it in such away that it will meet the needs of students and conferringsand everything else so this was the first major project.
the anonymity which had been crucialto the success of his business became an obsession with feeney. as the buildings went up maintaining the veil of secrecy becamethe condition of any grants the foundation made. the joke used to be in the trade that a_p was synonymous with anonymous.
he explained to me that if we revealed who wasproviding the funding it would cease. it was very strange trying to explainto faculty and staff here where the money wascoming from, was i involved in the drugsbusinesses something like that, because these magnificent buildings wererising out of the ground and we couldn't explain really who was doing it. in nineteen eighty nine limerick finallygot its university
and as the campus grew so too did jobs and opportunities in thecity and beyond. no matter where you look on campus you can find chuck feeney’s mark. the thing he liked about the universityprogram was that there were buildings, there was bricks and mortar, you could kick them,you could touch them, you could feel them they were there. those who knew him before said that he’d been transformed, he was much happier and he was really enjoying life
the more he gave the more he enjoyed itit was quite amazing. the effect of feeney’s donations to limerick and other universities was slowly transforming the country but these investments would be dwarfedby the sheer scale of the next phase of the project meanwhile events in his home country offermanagh were drawing him into the complex worldof northern irish politics. well i think the terminal event was certainly the bombing in enniskillen. it just seemed so gross and
there were just people who unfortunately happened to be in the wrongplace at the wrong time. it struck me that this is not a good irish thing, we're not that kind of people that want to make people disappear from theearth because of their views. i met chuck one night at p_j clarke’s sat him down and said i was considering putting together a group
to go to northern ireland to become involved and try and bring an american dimension to solving the irish issue and chuck instantly said yes, i want to do it which was remarkable given who he was andgiven the fact that this was really kind of afool's errand in many people’s eyes. at the time there was no solution insight to the violence in northern ireland sinn fein was censored under sectionthirty one and had become political pariahs but there was a feeling that if the partycould be brought into the political
mainstream it could help move the peace process forward. at that time i sort of felt that the business of bringing a solution to the problem was as good a business as you could get into. in early ninety three o’dowd suggested that chuck feeneyshould meet the head of sinn fein
gerry adams. well the first time i met him was at a safe house in dublin and he struck the right away as beingopen, straightforward and i thought that this is the kind ofperson who can talk to both sides. what chuck brought to it was a confidence, or a trust, or an
acceptance that we were genuinely trying to do something to get the whole process together which would build a bridge out of conflict. feeney joined o’dowd and a group of wellrespected businessmen who were planning a landmark trip tonorthern ireland. we had conducted negotiations
with the clinton white house before weleft because we had become involved with the clinton people and we said look we're going to go overthere and while we’re there there will be acease-fire for the ira, it will be unannounced, it will be for ten days and it will send a signal that the republican movement want to move this issue forward. “the u_s delegation arrived for their meetingto a frenzy of media attention.
the american group of businessmen andtrade unionists then got down to three hours of talks.†he had a very incisive sense of people and i could see how he was remarkablysuccessful in business and he was a great man to kind of size-up asituation. as he was in his financial business as he was in trying to make sure thingswere done in a fair deal he was as sharp as any razor and when you said something to him, as complicated as northern ireland was
he understood what you were saying. chuck feeney works in avery intuitive way he doesn't have a very structured approach to things he goes by gut and by feel and inparticular he's always very concerned to get a sense of the people he's dealingwith and particularly the leader of the organization that he might be looking at. feeney the anonymous billionaire was nowat the center of a major world news story. he felt that real progress could onlybe made if the delegation met representatives of all sides.
we talked with paramilitaries and some of the stuff was that they were concerned the war that the republicans had carried out had been funded by irish america, and for the move forward the americans were going to play a big role in terms of the whole peace process, how northern ireland was designed, developed and all the rest of it, so we needed to actually talk to irish america to find out where they stood on all of this. from my point of view, i think
that that part of the process was very easy because irish america were open to hearing what was going on and they were very open, they actually i suppose in many ways helped loyalism move on. the visit was a success but the next challenge was to try to convince ahostile u_s state department that it should support a radical proposal. well we had a very basic plan that we would goback to the white house and we would explain that
our visit had coincided with a ten-day iracease-fire it showed that the good will on the part of the republican movementwas there and that now the white house needed to make agesture. we believed after discussing it at the congressional level with some of the representatives that there wassupport out there for
a way to get peopletogether and that culminated in the visa for gerry adams which seems perfectly logical today but they didn't think so at the time. how difficult was it for your group topersuade clinton to give adams that visa in the face ofpretty stiff opposition from the british? i think in fairness bill clinton he thought it through himself and
and thought that talking a better answer than killing. it was aroundthis time that feeney made a controversial decision to fund the establishment of a sinn feinoffice in washington. my rationale was straightforward i wanted to see an end to the problem and the idea of having an office where people could meet and
see each other seemed to be right. there were a lot of people counseling him not to get involved, i know for a fact that many people in his own organization called him and i had a few calls myself from people in his organization who were frantically saying, what the hell are you doing? i wish he had not decided to give itmoney that i think was not a good idea
and chuck disagrees on that but it was his money, it was certainly neverthe foundation’s money, that's an important issue the foundation never did and neverwould give money to a political cause. the concern at the time was that theira were not fully committed to the cease-fire andin fact broke the cease-fire during that time. were you not concernedthat your money was going to go to the wrong place?
i suppose there was a concern but as they say knowing the people and seeing them on a regular basis reinforced the belief that the ira and sinn fein we're looking for a solution. do you feel that there was any lasting damage done toyour good name? not that i know of. just over a year after chuck feeney and hisdelegation visited belfast another famous american would follow.
it was to be an historic turning point if thepresident of the united states could walk down the falls road surely anything was possible. “as he went into mcerlean’s bakery the crowds had already broken through the barriers providing areal security headache for the secret service.†i think one of the most glorious moments for us was president clinton coming to ireland for the first time to belfast and i also think one of the greatest things for ireland was this incredible situation where the president ofthe united states was walking up the
falls road walking down the shankill road which a couple of years previous to that could never even have been considered. i think that chuck and others like him and he's the one that strikes me most vividly as wanting to return the favor insome way the place that his people couldn’t live in that he has been part of the energy of making it a better place for the people who do live here.
clinton’s nineteen ninety five visit to belfast is now widely recognized as one of thekey to turning points in the history of northern politics. chuck was such a huge part of that i would go so far as to say i don’t think it would’ve happened without him. i think he was central to the american role and the american role was central to the process. aside from feeney’s personal involvement, atlantic philanthropies continues toinvest millions in projects in northern
ireland on all sides of the politicaldivide. chuck, i suppose in many ways through atlantic philanthropies put his money where his mouth is and it put money in struggling loyalist communities and he hasn’t asked are you a republican, are you a loyalist, are you a jew are you a muslim, he hasn’t asked that what he has done, is he says
these people need a leg up and i’ve got money that can help do that, and that’s what he’s done. “throughout the morning at his hotel the taoiseach met a number ofchief executives representing health care, electronics andthe service sector of the telecommunications industry. twenty of these companies are already in irelandfifteen others are looking for a base to service their company’s european operations.†in the nineteen nineties ireland with its low corporation tax and ready workforce
was beginning to attract more and moremultinational business. what the country didn't have was the educationalinfrastructure required to sustain the economic upturn. ireland ranked very poorly in theinternational tables in terms of expenditure and research and development and here we were presenting ourselves as a future majorknowledge economy and we weren't spending money on the knowledge. the reality was
that in nineteen ninety seven the government made an announcement thatthey would make one million available to meet the equipment needs of all of theirish universities so that was nonsense. after the success in limerick feeney was thinking big. he knew that a colossal investment in education would create a generation of highly skilledgraduates, and that they would attract big name employers and create opportunities for others.there were people out there who rationalized that helping universities
is helping the economy, is helping yourself,is helping your neighbors. but in order to fund the plans on thescale that he envisaged he needed more money, a lot more money so in nineteen ninety seven he soldatlantic’s share in d_f_s as a result almost overnight the foundation was flooded with over one point six billion dollars. chuck can’t stand having moneyaround, he just likes to see it spent
so he said to me one day in the summerof nineteen ninety seven, he said look i really like these buildingprojects we've been doing with these universities but they're not moving fastenough and i’d really like to up the tempo. funding from the government didn’t have that much of structureto it, we were the first ones that came along and said if you put up the money let's do a three-yearfive-year plan and you put up your money we’ll put up ourmoney and we’ll move it forward.
in the early years when he knew thatthe capital program wouldn’t be able to do that hedidn't put on that pressure we he then realized in ninety seven, ninetyeight, ninety nine that things were better for the country he then put thepressure on to make sure that the states lived up towhat he believed was his personal standard. a breakfast meeting was arrangedbetween the higher education authority and officials from the department ofeducation. over breakfast john said if we put up seventy five millionpounds for research funding would you match it? we’ll put
seventy five million pounds on the table but you've got to come up with a matchingseventy five million, and they kind of almost fell off their chairs. there was a moment's hesitation, so isaid i think we could write a paper on how we might spendthis. atlantic’s revolutionary funding plan was presented to the department of finance. their reaction to any proposal is to sayno and that was the reaction that we instantly met.
the resistance was that if you took this money that was bringing the capital program for third level education to certain level,therefore what would happened next year? what held the country back foryears we just didn't have the money for capital we always had to put our money into day to day issues but he had a broader view of things and a correct view of things. so we started working on the politicalchannel
and we started playing all the sort of, blackmail and violence that one uses in these intense inter-departmental debatesso atlantic played their part as well they sprung an ultimatum they said unless it’s fixed by such and such a date, which was a saturday morning, we’re off. but in terms of making a decisionthey dragged their feet, and you had to put them on a clock. yeah i guess so but that's the way it it works out sometimes.
we had quite frankly, i can say it nowwe had the academic debate within government and within the department who said this hasn’t got value and i believe it was a bit of a stupid argument that you were going to turn away the best gift horse that you’d ever get. after weeks of hard negotiations it wasfinally agreed that if atlantic put up seventy five million pounds the irish government would match it. the program for research in third levelinstitutions or p_r_t_l_i was born.
“these funds represent a major advance forthe country's research community and the representatives looked pleased attoday's announcement in dublin.†it will mean that we’ll be in a position to attract the best staff to our universities and our institutes of technology in the research areas which will improve quality, it will mean very significant capital investment in terms of new buildings and new equipment. and this transformed the nature ofhigher education and the nature of ireland’s attempt to attract foreigndirect investment
so the multinationals, the intels, and the microsofts, and the hewlett packards could be convinced that they could move upwards and putsophisticated research and development into ireland. chuck was behind what triggered this wholething and i doubt that the department ofeducation would have put a euro upon a euro to do thiswere it not for chuck’s initiative. what i think he did for many of uswho came in touch with him was that he
inspired us to think big. if we aspire to being a leadingknowledge-based economy and society in the world we needed to behave like one. this was typical of how chuck worked, there was the visionary part which was probably moreimportant than the funding but he followed through with funding to help others turn a good vision into reality. this he did with government, this he did with ireland. the idea was, we showed them the light. to date, atlantic has invested one point twobillion dollars in ireland alone
over seven hundred and fifty million ofthat has gone into third level education and the resulting new population ofhighly qualified post-graduates was undoubtedly a key driver of theceltic tiger economy. as with all his grants there was no publicity no names on buildings only a desire to promote opportunitythrough education all the more necessary
in troubled economic times. ireland is subject to good times and bad times and tougher times are coming and that just requires more support. “the irish public have often proventheir interest in seeing wrongdoing in corporate and political life beingexposed up to now tribunals set up by the statehave been the way it's done
but now a private group is about tobegin its investigations too with retired judge fergis flood at the head ofits board.†feeney's involvement in irish politicscontinued when in two thousand and five atlantic funded the establishment ofa center for public inquiry an independent watchdog charged with uncovering corruption in public life. well the concept of citizenwatchdog organizations is kind of unexceptional in a country like the unitedstates in many other countries as well in what you would say are mature democratic societies. i think
the idea of the center was to hold government accountable for things that happened because they call the shots. the person they hired to head up the center seemeda logical choice frank connolly was an established journalistwhose work on corruption had contributed to the establishment of the flood andmorris tribunals. we had a fellow, frank connelly
who i think was recognized as this one ofthe very good investigative journalists here in ireland. i think quite frankly this wasseen as a strange group to be watching ourselves and i suppose if in paris
an organization funded by a group ofirish people was set up to start investigating them, what would the french think? you felt you were entitled to fundsuch an operation in ireland and you felt it was worthwhile. yes if the center was ever able to carry out the goals that we had set out than itwould have been worthwhile. i think it was mentioned that we were planningto target individuals in our
investigations which of course isabsolutely absurd, we have never suggested any such thing, we never did any such thingwhat we said we were going to do is examine matters of public importance. this was the center’s first report andmany more they say are on the way on a range of controversies. in the beginning the center produced twowell-received reports on planning problems in trim and on the corrib gas controversy but soon there were allegations emerging
that seriously threatened to underminethe independence of the center. frank connolly, brother of niall connellyone of the so-called “colombia three†was alleged to have traveled to colombia ona false passport. the taoiseach met with feeney. i and mike mcdowell asked a question, what was thisreally about we weren’t attacking or lecturing him because he wasn’t that kind of a person, he could do whatever he wanted with his money
but i think we gave him at an honest assessment of the view in leinsterhouse and no more than that “undoubtedly the center for public inquiryaspires to be an organ of public opinion but equally it is onewhich in subversive hands has the capacity to gravely underminethe authority of the state.†the way we saw it in leinster house was that they were going to investigate decisions that were made and planned and undertaken.
well we see that the courts are the places you should dothat not ad hoc committees. citing the interests of nationalsecurity minister for justice michael mcdowell released the documents to the irishnewspapers claiming to prove that connelly hadtraveled to colombia. “all i have done is to give to the irish independent
at its request a copy of theforgery so that people in this country can determine where the truth lies.†even though the d_p_p found no evidence against him, pressure intensified on connelly to say where he had been at the timein question. did you ask him where he was for those coupleof weeks? probably, if not myself i said found out where frank was for thosecouple of weeks. you got no answer to that.
he didn’t answer that. it then became a matter of credibility for theorganization, that was a very painful and difficult episode that i think upset chuck feeney a lot. we hadn’t researched back far enough and we were surprised by what we discovered and then we
tried to carry the can for that because what you don’t discover is your fault too. are you in a position now or do you think you would be in a position ever to say where you were at the time andfinally end all that speculation i don't think it's my position i’ve already said to you that the investigation for what it was is finished so it's nonsense in my view that for me to be trying to explain things based on aninvestigation that was never justified in the first place.
if chuck feeney had stood up at any stage and articulated what he wanted this for people would have accepted that, henever did that my view is that is he never had researched this through. in a way could it be said that he was railroaded out, not by you but perhaps by
the government or individuals within thegovernment? well, that certainly is an assessment someone could make. elements in power not only that but including the former taoiseach i think didn’t like the idea of where this was goingto go and where it potentially could go, and if you look back now at what's happened inthe last couple of years we’ve discovered corruption on a scale none of us ever envisaged would emerge or even existed at the time and i think that's partly the tragedy of all of this. atlantic withdrew its funding
and the center was closed in december twothousand and five. the sad thing about this is that because the watchdog organization wassetback as a result of what happened and it could be some years i think before it can berevived. chuck feeney’s philosophy of giving while living is central to everything he does. his belief that it's better to givemoney away now has changed the lives of millions and his work isn't over yet.
feeney, an extremely shy man recently madethe difficult decision to sacrifice his anonymity and cooperate on a biography with conor o’clery, he did it because he wants his message ofgiving while living to inspire others my sense is that he's gettingto a stage in his life now where as i think all of us do when we get alittle bit older you ask yourself what is the meaning of your life been and what have you been able to contribute.i sense that the most important thing for him now is to spread the gospel of giving while living and to influence more people who have
money to give it away and to give it away wisely. we are a spend-down foundation whichmeans that we are going to over the next nine years or thereabouts spend down the assets of the foundation which would be inexcess of three billion dollars. in order to meetthe deadline of spending our endowment out of existence
by two thousand and sixteen we have to giveaway a million dollars every day of the year three hundred and sixty five days ayear. there’s logic in making things happen now especially if now there are things out there that arenecessary nowadays chuck feeney still travels to see thework that atlantic philanthropies supports in seven countries around theworld, in
projects on aging, children and youth, population health and reconciliation and human rights. i'm not here to tell anybody what they should do with their money, if youmake your money you do what you want with but i think there is anobligation certainly for the “haves†to reach out and to lookand see what they can do. any money that people give to any good cause as long as it'swell-managed is worthwhile.
i just hope that people will sort of try ityou'll like it. today with the same relentless drive andattention to detail that made him one of the world's richest men chuck feeney is now giving away the last of his billions. i wouldn't put him happy in the sense of content, i would say he's happy with what he'sbeen able to do and wishes there would be more and he's probably just as restlessand consumed with trying to make it better now
as he was in nineteen sixty two. he wants to be in the center of things. he wants to be where theaction is and if he has to get on an airplane and fly to fivedifferent airports he’ll go. my husband said to him one time, why don’t you just have a conference call instead of spending a day and a half in theairport to get wherever. i think my dad would wish he could live ‘til he’s a hundred and sixty, if not more, to keep involved and he tells me how pissed he is that he’s not going to be able to see how things turn out here or
there. he wants to keep going. he’ll never retire. i doubt it. he couldn't, he can’t. maybe the lord’s word is the decider on that. the poor are always with us you know, you’ll never run out of people youcan help.