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INTRODUCTION

NOEL WHELAN

FEW PERIODS IN IRISH history are likely to be as extensively excavated by future historians as that from 2008 to 2011.The financial and banking collapse, the acute economic and social crisis and the potentially seismic political shifts that Ireland experienced in those four years have already attracted volumes of analysis. Much of that analysis is framed in the context of political charge and counter-charge and almost all of it is shaped by intense and justified public anger.

It is unavoidable that this book, focusing as it does on the life and work of one of the central, if not the central, political figures of those years, will feed into the early drafts of the history of this turbulent period. While that is inevitable, that is not the purpose of this book.

This collection of essays gathers the observations of some of those most proximate to Brian Lenihan during these crucial years. It will be obvious to the reader that all of the contributors had strong affection for Brian and many of them are, therefore, defensive of his memory. Some, however, are simultaneously (or alternatively) defensive of their own actions. In some places, the contributors are critical of what Brian and his government colleagues did or, at least, are critical of how it was done. As well as covering their dealings with Brian Lenihan, some of the contributors have given their broader recollections and reflections on key events, some of them for the first time. Each contribution is shaped by the angle from which each writer viewed events at the time and by adjustments in their perspective, which may have occurred since. Like everyone writing about this period, they have, even after this short interval, the benefit of hindsight.

Those looking for a definitive account of Brian Lenihan’s life or detached judgement of his actions have come to the wrong place. In each of the following essays, the authors themselves set out their own particular connection to Brian Lenihan. It is for readers, each of whom will also come with their own pre-determined view of the man and the period, to decide the extent to which the contributors can be objective or the extent to which they may be over-compensating for being perceived as coming with inevitable bias.

While Brian Lenihan’s tenure as Minister for Finance will fascinate readers most, this book ranges over his entire political career and, indeed, covers non-political aspects of his life and his personal formation. The choice of contributors was not strategic or deliberate. In most cases, they were obvious. A number of people were asked to write up to five thousand words about the Brian Lenihan they knew and their workings or contact with him. There were some who declined, honestly acknowledging that, although they liked and respected him, they felt they knew him insufficiently to justify writing in this volume.

Through a combination of design and happenstance, the final line-up of contributors collectively gives a comprehensive if inevitably benign picture of Brian Lenihan’s political life and impact.

Harman Murtagh chronicles how Brian was shaped and initially schooled in Athlone, Mary McAleese and Rory Montgomery, as teacher and fellow student respectively, give some insight into how Brian’s years in Trinity College shaped him for later challenges, in which each of them had ringside seats. Mary O’Rourke, his aunt and later a fellow parliamentarian, was similarly positioned to give insights on his youth and later career. Feargal O’Rourke, Brian’s cousin and himself a leading expert on taxation issues, gives both a personal reflection and professional assessment of Brian.

Cathy Herbert was Lenihan’s closest political adviser in all his ministries, and along with Alan Ahearne, was part of his core team within the Department of Finance. Martin Mansergh was his junior minister in that department, while Eamon Ryan and Paul Gallagher engaged and befriended him from different perches around the cabinet table. Ray Mac Sharry had been minister for finance during a previous economic crisis and Brian valued his advice. Patrick Honohan was appointed by Brian as Governor of the Central Bank and he worked closely with him in that role. John Trethowan was asked by Brian to establish the Credit Review Office. Christine Lagarde, the then French finance minister, was a close colleague in the decision-making councils of the European Union, while the late Canadian finance minister, Jim Flaherty, bonded with him at gatherings of the OECD.

Brian Murphy and John Mullen offer insights into two significant by-elections in Brian Lenihan’s life and his undoubted talents for electioneering.

The various contributions draw a series of pictures of Brian in different times and places: a bright and curious young student sharing coffee in the Trinity Commons; a strong college debater, who later became a strong parliamentary performer; an ambitious young politician; a hardworking and innovative Minister for Children and then Minister for Justice and then an initially rattled, but ultimately fearless Minister for Finance.

For my own part, I didn’t actually get to know Brian Lenihan until about a year after he entered Dáil Éireann. It was at a point when I was easing out of politics and he was easing out of the Law Library. Our paths had never really crossed in Leinster House or the Four Courts, but, from a distance, he seemed a jovial, able, bright barrister turned politician. My first ever extended conversation with him happened by chance when he offered me a lift back to Dublin from a by-election campaign in Cork in October 1998. Over the two-and-a-half hour journey, we covered a range of political topics, including the merits of various government and opposition politicians and long-term political trends in Ireland, England and the United States. We then covered a range of historical topics. All of this was interspersed with commentary from Brian on the social and political geography of various towns we were passing through or by-passing en route.

Having worked in politics since college, I had met many senior politicians and, indeed, had become cynical about most of them. It was clear, however, that Brian Lenihan was unique. The man’s intellectual capacity was extraordinary and impossible to understate. The depth and breadth of his reading was phenomenal. He also had an impressive capacity to assess political nuances and shifts. One only had to engage with him for a short period to see that he also had a passionate commitment to politics and a yearning to apply his undoubted intellectual talents and political skills to improving the country.

I lived in Carpenterstown at this time and Brian developed an occasional habit of calling at the end of the day to reflect on the current political events, which often led to long, late night discussions.

In conversation, Brian could sometimes seem distracted, but only because his mind was like a computer with too many windows open simultaneously, such was his urgency in conversation and appetite for discourse. When talking to him, you might get a sense from his facial expression that he was no longer interested or engaged only to realise from some later reference that he had been following every detail.

A few years later, my wife moved to work in Belfast and the house in Carpenterstown became no more than a dormitory for me midweek. When Lenihan would telephone to say that he was dropping over, I would offer to shop or dial something to eat. He always declined and would again decline any offer of food on arrival. However, he would then proceed to spend much of his time in the house walking in and out to the kitchen scouring the fridge or presses for nibbles. During one such sequence of talking perambulation, I heard a shriek from the kitchen – he had stuck his hand into the under-used bread bin and found only green mouldy bread!

At this early stage in his political career, Brian was excited, active, engaged but impatient. Brian clearly, and in my view correctly, felt Bertie Ahern was thwarting his political advancement. Most politicians and commentators recognised Brian as cabinet material from the outset, but Ahern delayed appointing him even to junior ministerial office. Chairing the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution certainly interested him and played to his strengths as a lawyer and consensus builder, particularly when the committee was tasked with dealing with the abortion issue, but he was impatient to have the direct impact on policy, which being a minister would bring.

He was also, at times, overwhelmed by the response he attracted from the Fianna Fáil grassroots or members of the public. Although a mere backbencher, he was often mobbed by well-wishers at Ard Fheiseanna or other events. He himself wondered whether this was merely a residue of the affection in which his late father had been held. The rest of us could see that it flowed from his own regular competent media performances and because he himself was seen as a rising star in the party, and even then as a future party leader.

Like all politicians, of course, he enjoyed this attention, but he was also nervous around it. He was a surprisingly shy man. This – and his occasional demeanour of intellectual distraction – sometimes gave rise to lazy suggestions that he was somehow remote or detached. This was simply nonsense. Brian had a passionate interest in people, their views, their concerns and their opinions. Above all, he had genuine empathy and never in a contrived sense that some politicians mastered.

When finally appointed a Minster of State with responsibility for Children in 2002, Brian quickly got stuck into a range of issues about which he was passionate, the details of which have been well chronicled by Jillian van Turnhout in her essay in this book. He continued as Minister for Children in 2005 when the portfolio was upgraded to a cross-departmental role enabling him, although not a member of the Cabinet, to attend cabinet meetings.

The day that Brian Lenihan was appointed Minister for Justice was, perhaps, the happiest of his political life. He thrived in the role; he loved the department, its officials, and working with the Garda Síochána. As well as implementing a programme of law reform, he viewed as an important part of his brief the need to make the right appointments at senior and middle-management level in the department, in the prison services, in the Garda Síochána and to the judiciary. He gave careful consideration to each recommendation made to him.

His time in Justice was too short to have an enduring impact and he would have loved to stay there. He resented, in part, being yanked out of his comfort zone to Finance. He once recounted how, in the days before he became Taoiseach, Brian Cowen summoned him to his office then in the Department of Finance: ‘What’s this I hear about you wanting to stay in Justice? I want my best minister next door,’ Cowen said. The two Brians then had an intense conversation about some of the challenges he was likely to face in Finance, where fiscal contraction was inevitable. It seems that neither appreciated then the scale of the banking problems with which they would also have to deal. Lenihan actually took a private moment, as he walked back to his own office on St. Stephen’s Green, to reflect on the magnitude of the task he had just agreed to take on. The task demanded all of his extraordinary intellectual, political and communications skills, day and night, for the remainder of his too short life.

Caught up in pre-Christmas travel and other arrangements in December 2009, I missed a hint from Cathy Herbert on Christmas Eve that I should give Brian a call. On the afternoon of St. Stephen’s Day, TV3 began to run promos flagging a significant news bulletin and I started getting phone calls from Dublin saying there was growing speculation that it related to Lenihan.

Appreciating that something significant was happening, I rang him to let him know what the talk was. He answered the phone, no doubt fielding a series of calls, jokingly saying: ‘The Minister for Finance is enjoying Christmas at home with his family and will be making no comment.’ His upbeat demeanour, however, quickly fell away. It was clear that he was distressed at the situation in which he had been put, deprived of the space and time to enjoy a family Christmas and to tell those closest to him the details of a diagnosis he, himself, had only had days to absorb. It was just devastating news and devastating to watch it play out within hours on national television.

Many of us close to him had a sense that dealing with the illness was easier for him because he stayed working, but who can judge what really operates in the mind of a person living under the shadow of a fatal cancer. Brian had interrogated the best doctors in the field on the nature and inevitable consequences of the diagnosis. He had accepted that outcome intellectually. Emotionally, of course, at least for another year or so, he could not resist holding on to some hope.

Several of those who worked closely with him confirmed then – and go out of their way in their contributions to this book to confirm again – that he suffered no diminution in his intellectual capacity as a minister during his remaining two years in office. I concur with that assessment, but it is also clear that the diagnosis, while it did not impact on his capacity, certainly impacted on his frame of mind.

There is no doubt that he did adjust to a longer view. As the extent of the economic crisis became clear, Brian recognised before most people how traumatic the economic and social consequences would be. He also recognised the political consequences for Fianna Fáil. He knew too that his reputation would be damaged by the inevitable outcomes. His focus, however, was on the national challenge. ‘Dublin West doesn’t matter now,’ he used to say, ‘Fianna Fáil doesn’t matter now either. It’s only what works for the country that matters now.’ It was not just a mantra. He meant it and he meant it even more after his diagnosis. It was reflected, for example, in his determination to get Budget 2011 and the associated Finance Act passed before the looming general election date.

The narrowing of his mind-set also had an impact on his political ambition. He had, for a time, flirted with the idea of challenging Brian Cowen to become Taoiseach. Indeed, around the autumn of 2010, he more than flirted with it and deliberated aloud on the mechanism of how this might be achieved with many – in fact, too many – in the parliamentary party and elsewhere. Lenihan accepted, indeed, at times, touted the analysis of the growing number of Cowen critics in the party that failings in political leadership and disastrous communication were contributing to the national sense of crisis. Lenihan felt a less partisan, more coherent, more media-friendly and more popular leader would not only be in Fianna Fáil’s interest, but also in the national interest, at least until the next election.

When encouraged to act on this analysis, Lenihan vacillated. Among his stock answers to those who suggested he should lead a push was that the Minister for Finance challenging the Taoiseach, at such a time of economic uncertainty, would precipitate a constitutional crisis. He was also uncertain he would succeed in toppling Cowen and then it was simply too late. A factor which may have impacted on his prospects of success in a leadership challenge, but also on his attitude to initiating such a challenge, was that he could only ever be a stop-gap leader. Lenihan also had a loyalty to Cowen, who had promoted him and who, whatever his failings in Finance and as Taoiseach, had supported the tough decisions necessary to address the crisis.

Brian was giddy, almost childlike, about the invitation to speak at the Michael Collins commemoration at Béal naBláth. The Cork South West Fine Gael TD, Jim O’Keeffe, had sought to clear the way by enquiring in advance whether Brian would accept such an invitation if it was issued. He accepted instantly. O’Keeffe swore him to secrecy for a few weeks, but Brian could not resist sharing the historic news. That sunny day in August 2010, at the site of Collins’s assassination, was the highpoint of Brian Lenihan’s political career and of his public standing. Brian had worked carefully on his speech, but the fact that he was giving the oration was actually the most significant statement. For a long time after he spoke, people came up to him in small groups to shake his hand, have their photograph taken with him and to wish him well. He was almost the last to leave – fired up, visibly tired, but clearly touched.

The last paragraphs of the Béal na Bláth speech sat uncomfortably with the rest of the text because they dealt with very contemporary banking issues. They were inserted late in the day at a time when Lenihan felt he needed to publicly address the worsening picture of the banking debt, which had emerged over that summer. Brian always felt that it was inevitable Ireland would need to turn to the IMF-ECB-EU Troika for some level of support. He hoped it would be a less intrusive form of support and that it would wait until the spring of 2011. Events overtook him. Ireland was backed into a corner by the ECB in particular and, with money fleeing the country, he was bounced into a bailout.

The events surrounding the announcement and negotiation of the bailout are recounted by some of the participants in later essays in this book. The shambolic way in which the entry into negotiations with the Troika was communicated to the Irish people is something for which Lenihan himself must carry some of the responsibility. He contended afterwards that he had warned other ministers to be careful in their utterances during those crucial days, but failing to keep all ministers fully informed, ideally by means of a special cabinet meeting over that crucial weekend or on that Monday after stories about an Irish bailout began circulating in the international press was wrong, and not only in hindsight.

As the economists Donal Donovan and Antoin Murphy acknow- ledge in their 2013 book, The Fall of the Celtic Tiger, the motives for delaying the public announcement of a bailout were benign. Lenihan was hoping to obtain some alternative support mechanism short of a formal bailout or hoped, at least, that delaying a formal letter of application would strengthen the Government’s hand in the subsequent negotiations. The manner in which it was mishandled did much to compound the impact on an already traumatised Irish public.

The bizarre series of event, which subsequently gave rise to the collapse of Brian Cowen’s government, are also recounted in this book. Lenihan was bemused and, at times, angry about the turn of some of these events. He had known, once Ireland had entered the bailout programme, that the Government could not last long, as its popular mandate had dissipated. His primary focus during this time was to get as much of the budgetary process as possible completed before the election was called. In doing so, he bequeathed a great gift to the new government and made a significant contribution to Ireland’s ultimate emergence from the bailout in a relatively short period.

Brian Lenihan’s decision to contest the leadership of Fianna Fáil after Brian Cowen’s resignation was curious. He talked, it seems, to none of those to whom he usually turned for advice that crucial afternoon, but, it seems, after holding back from challenging, he now felt obliged to contest the vacancy. It was a pointless exercise always doomed to failure. Micheál Martin, who had resigned a week earlier when his challenge to Cowen’s leadership had failed, was set to be the beneficiary, such as it was, of the Fianna Fáil leader’s resignation. Lenihan had been damaged by association with the bailout and by suggestions that he had conspired against the Taoiseach.

When I did get hold of him early that evening, he was dealing with departmental matters, but he realised that he needed a base from which to do some leadership campaigning. I invited him out to our house, in Ranelagh, where he spent three hours simultaneously negotiating a new timescale for the Finance Bill with the Greens and ringing Fianna Fáil TDs seeking their support for his leadership candidacy. In most cases, he was calling his party colleagues several hours after Micheál Martin or the other leadership contenders. Feeling a need for momentum in his already stalled and doomed leadership bid, he decided to call a press conference for the following morning. I worked up some words for that press event – the only lines I had ever written for him in fourteen years – and Cathy Herbert reworked them with us over email. In framing those few short pages, it was apparent to all three of us that Brian, damaged by the bailout and limited by his diagnosis, had little to offer Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators as leader, except to front a containment mission in the forthcoming election.

The following Wednesday Micheál Martin won, as predicted, and he did so decisively. There was further humiliation for Lenihan in the fact that a cohort of Brian Cowen loyalists threw their support behind Eamon Ó Cuiv in the leadership vote (not at Brian Cowen’s instigation, it should be said) and Lenihan was nudged into third place.

Brian Lenihan decided to stay and fight the 2011 election, although he knew Fianna Fáil would be out of power and he himself would struggle to be re-elected. He was privately critical of other senior Fianna Fáil figures, who he felt had walked off the pitch in the final stages of the match. He enjoyed that one last campaign and had a sense of reconnecting with his voters in what he used to call ‘the barony of Castleknock,’ but he was philosophical throughout, as Marie Louise O’Donnell captures in her essay in this volume. Brian was touched by the fact that the voters re-elected him and took it as a mark of the regard in which he was held locally. He knew also that there was an element of sympathy in that support: the voters of Dublin West had decided to shield him from one final blow.

For the short few months in opposition after the 2011 election, Brian was sanguine. He enjoyed the additional time at home greatly. He continued to visit Leinster House regularly and jokingly reminded colleagues and opponents that he had not yet gone away.

In late April 2011, we had our last chat in person over a quiet cup of tea in the Westbury Hotel. His form was very good, his mind was sharp, but his physical presentation was weak. Among the things we discussed that afternoon was his need to get down on paper his own account of some of the events of the previous years. We talked, in code, about how he should do so while the events were fresh in his mind, but, of course, we both knew it was for the purpose of the historic record before time ran out on him.

He was content that he had already given his take on the background to the Bank Guarantee at the meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service on 26 February 2009. He had also dealt extensively with the economic and international dimensions of more recent events in an off-the-record interview with Dan O’Brien, for BBC Radio Four, some weeks previously. He had cleared a short extract of that interview for broadcast in a documentary O’Brien made on the bailout and he was shortly to receive a transcript of the entire interview to decide what to do with the rest of it. He had a sense, however, that he still needed to give his perspective on the political dimensions to many of the key events. We agreed that, when the Whit break in the court calendar came in early June, he would come and sit before a tape recorder in my offices near the Law Library and I would prompt his recollections on his time as minister and get it typed up for him. It was not to be; fate had a different momentum.

As we said our goodbyes outside the hotel, he to head to Leinster House and me to the courts, I took a last minute notion to walk with him over to Kildare Street. I was concerned, I suppose, in part, that he might not be physically up to getting there safely, but concerned, in reality, I think now that I might not see him again. As we strolled the few blocks, I noticed that people stopped as he passed – in their eyes I saw recognition, then affection and then concern.

After that I didn’t ring him, but waited for him to ring me for fear I might be intruding. We spoke a couple of times on the phone. They were short conversations, in which he struggled to be animated and, in which, I dared not ask him whether he was at home or in the Mater because to hear he was at home would probably have been more upsetting. The last such call faded out on some talk of a Fianna Fáil front bench reshuffle.