Jim Lillis – Hurler, hillwalker, volunteer and Coolock changemaker

“I hurled at minor level in Clare, playing for St Flannan’s. Later I became an international hurler, because I worked with Aer Lingus and when we went abroad we played anybody who could muster a team.
“I played squash competitively and later joined a hillwalking group. I’ve been with them for over 30 years and we’ve walked all over Ireland, the UK and in the Alps.”

CLARE TO JAPAN

Jim partly sought a job with Aer Lingus so he could travel, however he worked mainly in head office. After doing a degree by night he got a job with Ireland’s new Industrial Development Authority (IDA) and got to travel the world.
Japan is the most exotic country he has visited, he said: “Once you get out of Tokyo and into the countryside it’s very different to Ireland. Lots of very steep hills, lots of timber homes. The have temples and very different rituals. And the civility of the people in general I was very impressed with.
“As a life experience travelling is very important. Exposing yourself to other cultures is uplifting and enlightening.”

POVERTY IN TALLAGHT

Poverty was prevalent across Ireland when Jim got his first job in the early 1960s and throughout his star-studded career, he was always drawn to volunteering.
“When you come from the West of Ireland you’ve seen poverty. You couldn’t avoid it in the 1960s. After I moved to Dublin, one day a friend of mine had to bring some help out to Tallaght to a new place called Jobstown and he said ‘Will you come along?’. So I did and when we arrived there Jobstown was only in its embryonic stages. It was very raw. There was a burnt out truck up at the top of the road and we called into a lady’s house to give the household Vincent de Paul help.
“When she opened the door she thanked us, but said ‘We need mattresses’. What had happened was that some family became homeless, they needed someplace to go and they came to her and there was already two homeless families living in her house. You were confronted with real poverty. And the only people helping them other than the Vincent de Paul were three nuns who were living in a house in the same area. That opened my eyes and it’s always stuck with me.”

SHOCKING BAD HAND OF CARDS

For 21 years Jim served as the chairperson of Speedpak and he never saw it coming.
“I was a new board member and at the second meeting I was sitting there sort of day-dreaming. The next minute the chairman announced that he was retiring at that meeting and that he was nominating Jim Lillis to take over. That’s how people get bounced into it. I have been chairperson since then,” he said.
He was in place before new regulations were introduced and today there are limits on how long a board member can serve. Jim had good reason however for sticking around (listen to the podcast).
“The big thing for people like me coming from a middle class background and a secure job and I’ve worked all my life, I haven’t been unemployed for a single day – and you come into an environment like Darndale where there are great people who have been dealt a shocking bad hand of cards. And they have to make do with this and they have ambition, but they’re stuck.
“When you come to the board meetings and you see that you’re making a difference, that there are awards coming to the company, that people coming through here are getting jobs, it makes it all worthwhile.”

COLLECTIVE PRIDE

Asked what he and the company would be most proud of collectively, he pointed to a wall of awards.
This year Speedpak won the Environmental, Social and Governance Social Impact Award for Small and Medium Enterprises from Business & Finance magazine.
“We have also won national awards from Diagio, from Ulster Bank and from others,” added Jim.

JOINING A BOARD 20 YEARS AGO V. NOW

He said there is “an enormous difference” between joining a board in 2002 compared to today. He has seen increasing expectations placed on volunteers, a raft of new regulations, the setting up of the Charity Regulator, and new challenges in adhering to a governance code.
“This has all made it very difficult for spontaneous charities to be set up. Now you have to build a structure, you have to have responsibility for all your actions,” he said.

RISKS OF VOLUNTEERING

There is more pressure on voluntary board members nowadays and Jim was horrified by an example of volunteers being abused by the system recently – as shown on RTE:
“Revenue sent them a bill for over €100,000 that they were tax liable for personally. It took four years to resolve. From the start, someone senior in the Charity Regulator’s office should have spoken to some senior person in Revenue. This does great damage to our sector.
“We’re very lucky in Speedpak that we have great people on the board who have specialist skills. There is trust in each other. We abide by the regulations. We have adopted the governance code and we fulfill all the regulations, but it takes an enormous amount of time. Here it took nearly two years to get through all of the processes. It would put most people off (especially if you’re starting up).”

MAGIC WAND and VOLUNTEERING

Jim would like to see volunteering, community development and social enterprise promoted like never before, given as strong a push as the IDA gave to enterprise and employment. If he had a magic wand he would set up a national entity to promote the good in the community and voluntary sector.
“A huge amount of people give their time to rugby clubs and GAA clubs. That’s volunteering and some of those entities are almost replacing social institutions in their community, they are great outlets. I would like a big promotional campaign of role models. I’d like to see a programme to promote volunteering and social enterprise in Ireland where it is recognised as being of great value. That would be highly beneficial, because otherwise there’s a risk that there’s a great loss of a moral compass in Irish society,” he said.

PHILANTHROPY

“A positive development in recent years is that nowadays there is more awareness of CSR – corporate social responsibility. American companies brought it here; It’s almost part of the American culture that you owe something back to society without making a big deal out of it,” said Jim.
“Some companies sail close to the wind because they just rename their marketing budget ‘corporate social responsibility’. Then you have other companies who are really great and they look for no publicity. We have some here who have helped us, with no publicity. They find people, they find expertise, they’ll finance projects for you. They see it as part of the responsibility of the company to reach out. It’s a very good attitude,” he concluded.

HEROES

Outside of family he named two people he hugely admires.
“I highly respect Michael Killeen who was the first chief executive of the IDA. In the 1950s over 400,000 people immigrated and the IDA was set up to create industry and jobs. Great credit is due to him.
“Pádraig Harrington would be my second hero. There’s always a smile on his face and he has three Masters behind him.”

FUNNY

Finally, you might ask – what is someone with such a positive attitude reading at the moment?
“I’m reading ‘This is Happiness’ by a guy called Niall Williams which is based in West Clare, part of my homeland. It’s set in the 1950s and it’s very funny book,” concluded Jim.