WITHOUT
POWER OR GLORY
Dedicated to Saoirse, and the life
she has ahead of her.
WITHOUT
POWER OR GLORY
The Green Party in
Government in Ireland
(2007-2011)
WITHOUT POWER OR GLORY
First published 2012
by New Island
2 Brookside
Dundrum Road
Dublin 14
www.newisland.ie
Copyright © Dan Boyle, 2012
The author has asserted his moral rights.
PRINT ISBN: 978-1-84840-131-0
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84840-177-8
MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84840-178-5
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
New Island received financial assistance from
The Arts Council (An Comhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 | Ready For Government?
2 | The ‘Change’ Election
3 | Playing Senior Hurling Now
4 | A New Regime?
5 | The Long Goodbye
6 | Guaranteed To Fail
7 | A Budget Too Soon
8 | NAMA GUBU Revisited?
9 | The Year of Living Dangerously
10 | Resigned to Fate
11 | The Beginning of The End
12 | The End is Near
13 | The Men In Black
14 | The End of The End
Postscript
I would like to thank New Island Books for the faith that they placed in this book. I’m hugely appreciative of the patient editing done by Eoin Purcell and Dr Justin Corfield. Special gratitude is due to Kevin Rafter who encouraged me to have this book published. I’m also grateful to Katrina Doherty who read an early draft, and to Niamh FitzGibbon who kindly gave me the space that allowed me to write the initial chapters. The comprehensive notes of Niamh Allen, former Parliamentary Group Secretary to the Green Party, have been an invaluable resource.
My final thanks go to those with whom I’ve shared these experiences. I hope that this book may help to create a better understanding of why we did what we did, trying to do the right things for the right reasons.
Brian Lenihan beckoned me from the Seanad chamber into the adjoining ante-room. He then proceeded to berate me in front of about a dozen Department of Finance officials. His fury was immense, lapsing into incoherence as he followed questions with further questions, the answers to which he suspected he already knew. ‘What do you think you are playing at?’ ‘You must think you are very clever?’ I took the barrage passively initially, reminding myself that this wasn’t a very well man, and a man who was under considerable pressure.
However, the relentlessness made me respond in kind. As we shouted at each other, he worked his way to what he felt was his coup de grâce: ‘That is why your party is responsible for everything that is wrong with this country.’ I stared at him in disbelief, said no more, and went back into the Seanad chamber.
The arrogance and denial in that statement had stunned me into silence. It encapsulated how Fianna Fáil thought of the Green Party. Even now, when we were no longer a part of government, we were expected to do Fianna Fáil’s bidding. To them, we were the bit players who were not expected to change the script.
The Seanad was having its final sitting before the general election in February 2011. The Dáil had risen, with the sole remaining business being the passage of the Finance Bill: the most savage Finance Bill in the history of the State.
Constitutional niceties demanded that the Dáil be open to being recalled should the Seanad propose any changes to the bill. The political reality, though, was that the now minority Fianna Fáil government, acting through the Minister for Finance, was not going to allow any changes to be made.
Intransigence of this nature was always part of Irish political machismo. In the case of the Seanad dealing with a Finance Bill, it was also somewhat unnecessary. The Seanad does not have the power to amend the legislation in the case of a bill of a financial nature, but can only recommend changes. Making any such recommendation would have meant recalling the Dáil.
As leader of the Green group in the Seanad, I didn’t necessarily think that recalling the Dáil was such a bad thing. It was an important time in the political and economic history of the country. The Finance Bill was an important part of that process. To come back again might have improved the bill before the country embarked on a general election that would be badly informed on so many factors anyway.
The Labour Party suggested a change in the bill. The change would require that bonus payments given to executives of the all but nationalised financial institutions would be published. It was something that we felt we could support. Much of the public anger that was persisting in relation to banking centred around issues of continuing lack of responsibility and the perception that those who had caused the problem were still enriching themselves.
The motion wasn’t that well written in our opinion, but we were prepared to co-operate on rewriting it and having it re-submitted for the report stage of the bill. When the order paper was produced, it caused a great deal of panic within Fianna Fáil. The vote would be close. This was the reason for Brian Lenihan’s outburst.
The constitutional confines in which the Seanad operates means that no recommendations can be made that impact on the cost assumptions behind a Finance Bill. This means that decisions on taxation, revenue raising, or where the axe may have to fall are excluded from consideration by senators. This small point about banking might not have been the issue on which to make a stand, even though it remained a point worth making.
In the end, the motion was defeated by 26 votes to 25. The 24 Fianna Fáil senators were joined by Fiona O’Malley and Eoghan Harris, and thus the Dáil was spared the indignity of having to examine the Finance Bill one more time.
***
Much like our relationship with the wider electorate, our action in the Seanad, even with a real motive, only seemed to alienate everyone. Fianna Fáil, who already hated our decision to leave government, now hated us even more, as did the other parties, despite being given their long-demanded election.
Being able to please no one had plagued us since we had made our decision to leave government in November. ‘Why not leave immediately?’ we were asked. ‘Why stay in Cabinet when you’ve called time on being in government?’ ‘Why indicate a preference for an election from January when you didn’t possess the means for bringing that about?’ ‘Why support a package of measures during this time which, by their very nature, would be subject to widespread public disapproval?’
The following chapters attempt to answer these questions and more. Some questions can’t be answered satisfactorily, because some things we simply got wrong. Being in government at the time of the biggest economic challenges in the history of the State was an experience that chastened us all, but provided valuable lessons that can help point to a more sustainable future.
This final meeting of the Seanad took place on January 29th. The maelstrom that had been life in government and Irish politics reminded me of newspaper article I had written in the aftermath of the general election in 2007. The intense personal experiences that I underwent then caused me to remember a line from the Talking Heads song, ‘Once In A Lifetime’:
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
How we, both as a party and as a country, ‘got here’ is the question that seeks resolution in these chapters.
We went into this with our eyes open. Our breakthrough of winning six seats in the 2002 election saw our attention move for the first time to the idea of being in government. Local government elections in 2004 were also relatively successful, after which preparations began in earnest.
Throughout the party there was widespread expectation that being in government should be part of our continuing journey. There was also general agreement regarding the policy and the strategic approach that we would take. Personal expectations would be put aside and dealt with when they had to be.
Within the 22nd Dáil, we were seen to have performed well, operating with an eagerness and an enthusiasm that showed up the tired politics being offered by the more traditional political parties. The policy agenda seemed to be very much on our wavelength, and climate change became a regular topic of interest to a media that hungrily sought new angles through which to present Irish politics. Our opinion poll ratings crept ever upwards, peaking at 8%.
And yet those of us who had been through previous election campaigns knew that our opinion poll ratings had to be high if we were to withstand the spillage in support that always occurred during a general election. Part of this spillage came from a basic lack of political organisation. The Greens remained an amateur political grouping. Our position on refusing corporate donations meant that we never had the resources to compete with larger political parties. Our small membership meant that we could never meet the challenge of the last week of intensive canvassing that worked so much against us.
To try and avoid this repeating pattern from previous election campaigns, the party established two internal committees: an electoral committee, which was an electoral task force chaired by John Gormley as Party Chair, and a policy committee, which was known initially as ‘the Bütikofer Committee’. The second committee was called after a contribution made by Reinhard Bütikofer, then chair of the German Greens, who spoke at our 2004 Members’ Convention in Galway about how the German Greens had prepared to become a party of government. In 2005, this process was further added to when the Finnish Green Minister for the Environment, Pekka Haavisto, spoke at the Party Convention in Cork.
In leading the electoral task force, John Gormley was helping to define the role of the Party Chairperson. Irish Greens, like most of our international counterparts, had been wary of formal leadership structures, but the failure to have someone on whom the media could focus was something that had to be changed. In 2001, Trevor Sargent was elected as the first party leader with Mary White as his deputy. In 2002, the new leadership was complete when John Gormley was elected as the first Party Chairperson.
The electoral task force went about the business of seeing candidates selected in every constituency. Each constituency was then prioritised as regards whether a Dáil seat was a possibility, whether a city/county council seat was possible in the short term, whether a town council seat could be brought about, or whether it was just a matter of giving voters in a constituency the opportunity of voting Green with no expectation of any electoral payback. The meagre resources of the Party were allocated according to these criteria, although the task force took it upon itself to standardise election materials such as posters and leaflets, again something that had been left to local candidates’ discretion in previous elections.
The Bütikofer Committee met confidentially. Its remit was to examine the policy scope of the party, to fill in those areas where policies were not in existence or not deemed to be substantial enough. For the most part, the committee was charged with making the Green Party’s policies more voter-friendly. Membership of this committee was tight. Eamon Ryan and I were members, as was the party’s General Secretary Dermot Hamilton, the Head of Research Carol Fox, the Parliamentary Group Secretary Colm O’Caomhanaigh and Lucille Ryan O’Shea for the party’s national executive.
In parallel to this, from 2005 on, the party had published a number of policy-position papers on subjects such as community development, care of the elderly and pensions, child care and pre-school education, transport and equality and civil rights issues. The appointment by the Houses of the Oireachtas of a parliamentary researcher to each TD proved to be a great help.
The results of this help could be seen in practical policy as well as theoretical policy development. By way of example, Sue Duke and Claire Byrne, working in Eamon Ryan’s office, helped to pioneer a schools competition: ‘No Logo’, which loosely referenced the book by Naomi Klein, and set about encouraging a better understanding of how goods are produced and how local production is invariably better. The competition had a considerable take up, which further helped in boosting the party’s profile.
Back in our parliamentary offices, we found the thorniest of policy areas was that of economics. The hottest potato was that of the corporate tax rate. In the 1997 election we had argued for a 17.5% rate. In 2002, our argument was for a 15% rate, but in the meantime the questioning of the corporate tax rate had come to be seen as heresy, particularly within the media. As economics spokesperson, I argued that to hang ourselves on this issue would be to distract attention from the other more radical things we were saying in relation to economics. My view did prevail, but not before some heated debate at our party conference.
John Gormley was especially nervous about how our economic policy would be perceived. Representing the mostly leafy suburbs of Dublin South East, John realised that we shouldn’t go out of our way to unnecessarily antagonise middle-class voters. His apprehension was added to by sharing a constituency with the by then leader of the Progressive Democrats Michael McDowell, who wasted few opportunities to taunt the Greens with his charges of our being economically illiterate.
Before the 2002 General Election, as the party’s economic spokesperson, I reacted to a Financial Times story that claimed that Ireland was now the most globalised economy in the world. In a press release I said that this should be no source of pride:
What this report indicates is how dangerously open Ireland’s economy has become, how it is most likely to be affected by declining international circumstances, and how we rely to too great an extent on foreign directed investment.
Two lessons should attach to this report, but neither lesson is likely to be given any consideration by our economically callous government. The first lesson to note is the continuing failure to produce a sustainable, indigenous economy. The second lesson is the failure to realise that short-term economic prosperity, brought about through slavish adherence to globalisation, is often bought at the expense of the world’s developing countries.
This press release would be referred to on a number of occasions by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael during the 2002 and 2007 elections as evidence of the Greens being flaky on the economy. I don’t regret making the statement, as the very openness of the Irish economy has been one of the factors that subsequently brought us to our current economic situation.
The other touchy issue was that of Europe. We had consistently advocated ‘No’ votes in the various referenda on the European Union accession treaties, arguing that the democratic deficit within the EU had to be addressed before attempts to deepen the EU should be made. The defeat of the Treaty of Nice in 2001 had panicked the political establishment in Ireland, and indeed throughout Europe. The Irish Greens, despite this, were also a minority within European Green thinking as to how the EU should develop. While views similar to the Irish were held by the Swedes and British, most European thinking was being led by the Germans and the French.
That said, Irish Greens tried to be proactive in our opposition to European treaty referenda. Prior to the first Nice referendum, John Gormley had been an active participant in the Constitutional Convention chaired by former French President Giscard d’Estaing. After the defeat of Nice I, the Green Party fully participated in the newly established National Forum on Europe, which involved many public meetings throughout the country. Despite this, there was also an understanding that, if in government, our position on Europe would not hold.
John Gormley was also particularly exercised with another issue. Should an opportunity to be in government arise, whom would the Green Party representatives in the Cabinet be? There would be an expectation of having two Cabinet Ministers and two Ministers of State, which was the representation achieved by similar sized political parties in previous governments.
As a parliamentary group, we had yet to confront the difficulties that would come from a clash of personal ambitions. We tended to get on well with each other. The closest thing to distrust that existed was between Paul Gogarty and Eamon Ryan, where Paul was unhappy with the way that Eamon had handled a failed bid to be a candidate for the presidency in 2004.
The classic ideological split that has existed in green parties, between the fundamentalists (‘fundis’) and the realists (‘realos’), didn’t really exist any more in the Irish Green Party. There were of course traditionalists, but there seemed to be a unity of purpose: the party was in the business of seeking power to bring about change.
***
Much of the election preparation centred on what seemed to be an unending series of meetings involving NGOs and interest groups – interest groups that previously had sought to have as little to do with the Green Party as possible. A good example of this would be the regular meetings that were held with the Irish Banking Federation. A particular meeting in 2006 was attended by Eamon Ryan and me. We brought up the question of the efficacy and economic sanity of issuing 110% mortgages, and the general lack of sustainability that seemed to exist in property market; a market the banks seemed intent on inflating further. The response to our concerns was both arrogant and condescending. We didn’t understand banking, we were told, besides which the market would correct itself in a relatively painless manner.
Around the same time, with party leader Trevor Sargent, we were summoned to meet with Brian Goggin, Chief Executive of the Bank of Ireland, and two of his senior colleagues. The meeting took place in his suite of offices at the bank’s headquarters on Baggot Street. We absorbed the opulence of the décor and the furniture, although we also enjoyed the fine food and wine that was supplied. It was clear that we were in the midst of one of the power centres of Irish life.
Our time was tight with a vote in the Dáil looming, but the time was used to probe us on whether we were ‘sound’ on banking issues. We were being royally wined and dined; an extremely sumptuous affair, although I suspect it was just another meal for the Bank of Ireland executives. At the end, it seemed we had met with their approval, until we had returned to Leinster House, when Trevor Sargent received an irate phone call from Brian Goggin berating him for not clearly stating our policy to introduce a 5% bank levy in the meeting. Our experience of the arrogance of banks and bankers was even then becoming far too prevalent.
Even with environmental NGOs, our relationships were far less robust than they should have been. Other political parties co-exist well with NGOs and interest groups, a classic case being the relationship between the Labour Party and the trade unions. Environmental NGOs, especially those in which Green Party members held senior positions, seemed anxious to be as apolitical as possible, perhaps overcompensating when it came to the Green Party.
The Bütikofer Committee experienced a name change in 2006, subsequently being referred to within the party as ‘the Hamilton Committee’. The party’s General Secretary, Dermot Hamilton, had died from a heart attack in January 2006, and the name change was to honour his memory within the party.
Dermot Hamilton was the Green Party’s second General Secretary. Like his predecessor, Stiofán Nutty, he had been part of Trevor Sargent’s constituency organisation in Dublin North. This group, having successfully elected Trevor in every general election since 1992, had long proved itself to be the best politically organised and managed Green group in the country. Stiofán, and later Dermot, sought to bring these qualities to the national party organisation.
Earlier in his political life, Dermot had been a member of Fianna Fáil, where the principles of ground-level politics had been ingrained into him; principles he sought to transfer to the Greens. His death, at the incredibly young age of 48, was a huge shock to the party and its members.
His replacement was Donal Geoghegan. Donal had applied for the General Secretary position twice before with my encouragement. I was slow to encourage him again lest he was once more unsuccessful, but ultimately he was. His appointment was something of a departure for the party as he hadn’t been a party member. He brought with him experience of the Community and Voluntary sectors, and with that an intimate involvement in the social partnership process.
Donal’s appointment as Party General Secretary also saw him take responsibility for the Hamilton committee. He did this well, ensuring that its deliberations never became known in the most open of political parties. This sensitivity was required because the subtext of the work of the committee was to prioritise the policies of the party, and consider how those policies might be addressed in the context of any negotiations occurring should the party participate in government.
The 25th anniversary of the founding of the party took place on December 3rd, 2006. An event was organised for the Central Hotel, Exchequer Street in Dublin. It was to be the launch of a book, A Journey to Change, marking the history of the party to date. It was at that hotel on that date in 1981 that an exploratory public meeting was held, which led to the establishment of a Green Party in Ireland.
In May 2006, I had discussed at various levels within the party the need to mark this date. The book was thought to be a good way of achieving that goal. My role, admittedly largely self-appointed, was to act as an overseeing editor on the publication, sourcing 25 representative members to write personal observations on their involvement in the party. Under our so politically correct approach to these things, I had to ensure that there was an appropriate balance between older and newer members, male and female, elected and volunteer, while including contributors from a range of geographical locations. I then wrote chronologically linked, themed chapters between each contribution, sketching how the party had evolved during the period.
Because time was short it required several people to put the publication together. I was greatly helped by my parliamentary researcher Laura Wipfler. She worked with my friend, and party stalwart from Cork, Sean O’Flynn, as sub-editor, while my secretary Edel Boyce helped with typing the manuscript. This was harder than it needed to be, because in order to short-circuit the process even further I had taken my Dictaphone on holiday with me in order to dictate several of the chapters. Others with me got more benefit from the Black Sea sun.
In any case, after this truncated process, the launch of the book was a significant event. Noted broadcaster John Bowman had kindly agreed to do the launch. Again we fretted about how to thank him for making himself available. We gave him a voucher for a well-known restaurant, but worried even then that the value of the voucher might have been seen as an attempt to curry favour.
The evening was very much a Green Party occasion. Founder members Christopher Fettes and Máire Mullarney were in attendance. Patricia McKenna’s children played in front of the microphones in a way that seemed to bother no one, although I did make a caustic quip that they seemed to have learned from their mother how to disrupt events.
Trevor Sargent as party leader spoke, and was followed by John Bowman who, as a political historian, spoke well on the context of the Greens in Irish politics. As author-cum-editor, I finished proceedings and then we all headed off, pleased with what we had accomplished.
There wasn’t much of a media presence at the launch. Harry McGee, then of the Irish Examiner, had been commissioned to write an independent overview of the book, and very fair it read. Others of a more political bent attended that evening. I had extended invitations to Oireachtas colleagues, and several came along. Pat Rabbitte, leader of the Labour Party, was there, partly out of an interest in books on political history, but largely I suspect because he wanted to encourage the Greens to become a firm part of a rainbow coalition after the impending election.
The Dublin South West constituency was well represented that evening. My friend Charlie O’Connor, Fianna Fáil TD for there (or Tallaght, as he constantly referred to it in his Dáil speeches) came along. Charlie and I had worked together several years previously with the National Youth Federation, and now found ourselves in Dáil Éireann together. Also present was Charlie’s greatest political rival, his Fianna Fáil stablemate Conor Lenihan. I have no doubt that Conor also had an interest in the publication, but he also saw himself as a mover, and he wanted to be a person who could keep a door open for the Greens with Fianna Fáil should the need arise.
First time Fine Gael TD Fergus O’Dowd was there. We had struck up a good relationship, and I’m certain that he wasn’t motivated by any need to be on a scouting mission for his party. To top things off, Senator Joe O’Toole came along, as did two independent TDs. Tony Gregory, who was whip of the independents within the Technical grouping in the Dáil, and with whom I had struck up a strong working relationship, was there. With him was Finian McGrath, independent TD for Dublin North Central. He was also someone with whom we got on well, but in Finian’s case affinity was something of value to himself, as the then substantial Green vote in that constituency would determine who would win a final seat in what was to become a three seater. To be fair to him, it was a strategy that was to prove successful as he was to see off Labour, Sinn Féin and the Greens.
Most people who were present on that evening had their minds turned to an impending general election. It had been four and half years since the previous general election, and a new election was likely to be called at any time. The Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government was sitting uneasily, while the accession of Michael McDowell into the leadership of the Progressive Democrats exacerbated this situation. Bertie Ahern’s evidence to the Mahon Tribunal, as Taoiseach, stretched credibility to the limit. A few days after our book launch, the Minister for Finance introduced what was to be the final budget of that administration. It was a giveaway budget – an election budget – with public expenditure dangerously increased by over 14%. After the Christmas recess, it would become a question of when the election would be called.
The Green party attempted to read the political climate. As ever with Irish politics, it was difficult to interpret. Even in advance of the election, efforts were ongoing to change the party from one of protest and opposition to a party of government. What the party was doing and how it was doing it was shifting perceptibly.
The fact that the party now had six TDs gave us access to large-scale State funding for the first time; something we used to the maximum degree. Regular newsletters were distributed in all six constituencies. Merchandising, in the form of umbrellas, mugs and campaign buttons, became more prevalent. Among the products being offered was a reusable jute bag. It was emblazoned with the party logo, and the legend: ‘Ready for Government’. It was without a question mark.