Edward Paras, 6/3/24, one week into IIP Dublin.

Orientation week just wrapped up, so I’ll be clocking in to the Customs House at 10 A.M. sharp tomorrow for my first day as a legal intern with the Department of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage. (Interchangeably referred to as “the DHLGH” or “the Department”) The Department is primarily responsible for administering Ireland’s public housing program, which aims to achieve housing for all by 2030. Additionally, the Department engages with local governments to ensure quality infrastructure and government services, (fire, water, etc.) and has recently been tasked with documenting and preserving Irish architecture deemed to be of heritage and cultural significance.

In the past, I’ve interned for the Fairfax County District Attorney and U.S. Embassy Manila, so a placement in an Irish bureaucratic government institution was in line with my prior experience, and to be expected from my placement manager. The government structure is a unique one, since it’s not based on efficiency or profit, but on ideology. Therefore, it attracts a certain kind of person who isn’t in it for the money, but has something they really believe in, or is drawn to a particular activity that only the government can do. I grew up in that environment, with parents who were drawn to the sense of purpose and worldwide lifestyle that diplomacy offered. The first and most important thing any public servant has to learn is that it’s not about you. As an executor of policy, you’ll often be enacting laws, regulations, and agendas you don’t personally agree with, written by politicians you didn’t vote for and officials you didn’t nominate. You have to be someone who cares enough about an issue to work on it 40 hours a week, and often more, but be flexible enough in your principles that you can work towards the exact opposite stance you hold on the issue.

As a foreigner engaging with the Irish political system for the first time, I’m at somewhat of an advantage here. Since I don’t have fully-formed opinions on local political issues, nor do I have any stake of my own in Irish society, I can carry out the work that’s put in front of me without much incident. Of course, no one stays in the dark for long. As I stay in Ireland longer and understand the current situation, particularly the ongoing housing crisis, better, I expect to develop opinions, for better and for worse, about whether the work I’m doing is the most effective solution. Regardless of how I come to feel about the agendas of the DHLGH, I will carry out all tasks assigned to me to the highest of my ability throughout my time here.

Since a number of my fellow Pitt students have been placed with real estate firms in Dublin, I look forward to discussing with them how our respective organizations are approaching the current housing crisis. (I suspect there may be substantial differences)

Truthfully, I don’t yet know the region-specific skills required to thrive in the government environment here. Whether in Virginia or the Philippines, I’ve always found that these things can’t be taught in an onboarding PowerPoint or a guidebook you read on the plane, nor are they even “skills” in the traditional sense. They’re intricacies and subtext, between the lines of the office space, and you come to know them with time and effort. As I alluded to earlier, the government is very ideological, and it draws strong personalities, people with charisma, or strong senses of what’s right and wrong, people with past experiences in humanitarian work or the military – and as an intern, you find yourself in these people’s orbit, learning from them, understanding their view and how they do things. These are the people who teach you the most at any internship. I can guarantee there will be such people at the Department, and they will shape my experience here as much as the housing crisis or Friday’s elections will. The most important thing then, will be to understand the unspoken rules of the workplace – who’s really part of the team and who’s, as one mentor put it “a stump.”

I don’t think there’s such thing as a place you can’t learn anything from. I’ve never been involved in the social services sector, so I will be learning constantly over the next seven weeks. I expect the first few weeks to be a challenge – at past internships, I’ve always felt that my best work happened after the first month, once I’d proven I wasn’t just there for a free lunch.