About The Role
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) is Ireland’s oldest independent human rights organisation. It has been at the forefront of every major rights advance in Irish society for 50 years, since 1976. ICCL helped decriminalise homosexuality, divorce and contraception. We have fought censorship and driven police reform, defending suspects' rights in dark times. In recent years, ICCL has led successful campaigns for marriage equality, data protection and reproductive rights.

We are looking for an experienced Head of Policy to plan and ensure the delivery of an agreed policy and research agenda that supports ICCL’s strategic plan. The successful candidate will provide a timely flow of impactful, well researched and legally accurate policy outputs from within the team, with particular emphasis on the areas of Justice, Equality and Democratic Freedoms.

Key Responsibilities
• Ensure that the policy agenda and research requirements of ICCL’s strategy are organised, supported and actioned, by assuming primary responsibility for producing or overseeing regular policy and research reports.
• Ensure that ICCL’s research and policy outputs respond to and engage with the agendas of the organisation’s stakeholders, in particular rights holders, policymakers, political actors and donors.
• Develop and implement a process to monitor legislative and policy developments in the areas set out in ICCL’s strategic plan.
• Supporting the Executive Director with fundraising work.
• Subject to the overall responsibility of the Executive Director for all ICCL output, ensure the legal accuracy of ICCL’s policy output in the areas of Justice and Democratic Freedoms.
• Working closely with the Executive Director and the Head of Communications and Development, develop, communicate and represent ICCL’s research output and policy positions to key stakeholders, including through media, making ICCL’s output relevant, interesting and impactful to our key audiences.
• Represent the ICCL nationally and internationally in support of and in conjunction with the Executive Director ensuring that the organisation is visible and advocating on behalf of human rights.
• Assist in developing, and engage in advocacy and representational work that effectively promotes, ICCL’s objectives.
• Develop and maintain relationships with international organisations, government and statutory bodies, donors, academia, the legal community, media and non-governmental organisations.
• Constructively and supportively manage the performance, work quality and outputs of policy staff, interns and consultants and encourage development and growth.
• Advise policy staff on research focus, methodology and standard of writing to ensure that ICCL’s research remains of the highest possible quality and credibility.
• Act as spokesperson for ICCL as required, sometimes at short notice, especially on current policy matters, including in the absence of the Executive Director.

What We Are Looking For
ICCL offers a dynamic and flexible working environment and the chance to use your skills and knowledge to make a genuine difference. Applicants will be assessed against the following requirements and are encouraged to use their applications to provide examples of how they meet these criteria.

Essential Requirements
• A degree in law and a recognised postgraduate level degree in human rights, or a related discipline, or a possible combination of human rights and law qualifications.
• Significant work experience at senior research and/or policy development level. While the number of years of this experience is not stated, it is important that the previous experience has been at a level that has made a significant contribution to the employing organisation.
• First-class research, drafting and writing skills.
• Experience of writing grant applications.
• A strong working knowledge of international and Irish human rights and equality standards and current issues.
• Proven capacity to produce high-quality research or policy material to tight and sometimes competing deadlines.
• Excellent communication skills typically demonstrated through:
       o Experience of working collaboratively;
       o Using influencing skills to advantage, especially in dealing with opposing viewpoints;
       o Experience of communicating complex messages to diverse, relevant audiences.

• Capacity to integrate effectively into a small organisation and to work collaboratively.
• Respect for the values of ICCL and a motivation to join in its drive to advocate for human and civil rights.

Desirable Requirements
• Relevant qualification to PhD level, in Human Rights or related field.
• Knowledge of EU law.
• Experience of media engagement via social media and print and broadcast media.
• Direct professional experience of engagement with international human rights mechanisms.
• Excellent organisational, time management and administrative skills, and experience of project management.
• A desire to deliver excellence, sometimes under tight deadlines and ability to deal with varied and changing demands on their time while remaining calm under pressure.
• Complete competence with new media technologies and IT.
• Awareness of the challenges facing a small civil liberties and human rights organisation such as ICCL in campaigning for an equal and fair society.

Salary range
€70,000-€75,000 depending on experience