An Cosantóir

www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 23 refused a course," Willie says; "it was always courses, courses, courses. I was building my CV, although I didn't know it at the time, because as a young man you never think of leaving the army." After many good years in the ARW, Willie was nominated for the 6 Potential Officers Course, on completion of which he was posted as a cavalry troop commander to 1 Cav Sqn in Fermoy. After completing his cavalry YOs course he went overseas again to Lebanon in 1988, with Recce Coy, 63 Inf Bn. He did three more trips to Lebanon; another with Recce Coy, one with the FMR, and one as Logs Officer in Naqora. Not long after returning from his last overseas trip, how- ever, Willie felt the time was right to move on. "I was 42," he told me, "and while I had enjoyed every minute of my time in the army I also believed I had plenty of time to start a new career. It was the start of the Celtic Tiger and it seemed a good time to start a new business. Prior to leaving I worked on my CV and started building my contact list." So in March 2001, Willie set up Eurocheck Security Con- sultants, mainly specialising in fraud investigations and consultancy work on intellectual property and software piracy. "It was a busy time," he recalls. "During the first few months after I left, I went on courses like accountancy (PRSI/VAT), adult education and business management." While Willie appreciates how much his training in the De- fence Forces has helped him, he warns against complacency. "I still use a huge amount of what I learned in the DF on a daily basis," he says, "but don't expect civvies to be overly impressed by your experiences – you need to be able to back it up. Saying 'I was in Bosnia 10 years ago' doesn't count for much!" In November 2007 Willie went on a war crimes investigation course held in the UN Training School in the Curragh Camp in con- junction with the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI). As a result of this he went to Darfur in April 2008 to conduct training on war crimes investigation for the IICI and the UN. In 2009 Willie was selected by Irish Aid and the Dept of Foreign Affairs to go to Israel and Gaza as part of EUBAM Rafah (EU Border Assis- tance Mission for the Rafah crossing point) as a special security officer to look after members of the team going in and out of Gaza. He was the only Irishman within the 50 international staff. At this time the recession had hit hard, and many of Eurocheck's existing customers had stopped spending on security. Following his recent experiences Willie decided to branch out into supplying security awareness and hostile environment training. "I looked at the threat faced by NGOs and other agencies operating in hostile environments around the world," he says, "and I put together a training course that I offered to charities, human rights groups and NGOs. We work with small and large groups and all training is tailored to suit the size of the group. "The training has evolved over the years to take ac- count of current situations and best practices. We have conducted training for personnel in the UK, Europe, South and Central America, Indonesia, Africa, and the Middle East. The market in Ireland is very small, so you have to think big – international – and for that you need plenty of contacts worldwide, which takes time to build up. "We also became more involved in teaching war crimes investigation and our trainers now travel around the world conducting training in these areas. We have been in Colom- bia, Syria, Holland and the US so far this year, and we are heading to Korea and Uganda shortly." Originally, Eurocheck only trained human rights and aid workers but due to recent increases in the dangers faced by journalists and photojournalists they have now started offer- ing hostile-environment training to this group as well. "We also teach them how to recognise war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity," Willie says, "as journalist often don't realise what they are witnessing: it's often only with hindsight that they realise it may have been a war crime." In early 2011, Willie was in Egypt during the Arab Spring, working as part of a human rights investigating team when they were asked to go to Libya for a few weeks. "We were on one side of Benghazi as the fighting was ongoing on the other," he told me. "We thought we were the first in but found that there were a lot of journalists and camera crews there already! These are brave people who bring stories to the world's atten- tion at huge personal risk to themselves. This is why I started looking at provid- ing this training. Of course, with the recent kidnap- pings and brutal killings of journalists this training is now even more relevant." For more info visit: www.eurocheck.ie or follow them on Facebook and twitter. Colombia 2014 UN Base Darfur 2008 Libya March 2011

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