Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
has changed us all
— June - July 2010
Bertie
least-considered characteristics of
Irish politics is that which has most defined it:
the ascendancy of Fianna Fáil. This asserted itself
between and , broken only twice, gave
way to a pattern of alternance (rotation) over the
quarter century - and then seemed
to re-establish itself in the general elections of
, and . It was as if the elector-
ate had acquired, and then lost, the knack of turn-
ing Fianna Fáil out. There is a remarkable dearth of
analysis of, and reflection on, what might be called
the macro-psychological effects of the decade of
three consecutive Fianna Fáil election victories
on civil society including the media, opposition
and civil service. These were considerable, even
devastating.
The most obvious effect of a return to Fianna
Fáil dominance was on the public service whose
independence and professionalism were placed
under attack at a number of levels. However, it cer-
tainly did not stop there. Every person in the state
who was not in one way or another signed up to
Fianna Fáil had to come to terms with its domi-
nance of government in Ireland. There was what
might seem a mild form of self-censorship: not
that one feared to express opposition to Fianna
Fáil or identify with an opposition party, but that
one did not wish to appear a raving lunatic. One
did not want to bang on, to appear at odds with
the fact of Fianna Fáil governmental hegemony,
to seem unreconciled to a semi-natural law. At a
political level, opposition politicians - however
dismayed - persevered in opposing, but in civil
society opposition became in some degree a mat-
ter of a mild form of passive resistance, a refusal of
mental assent, almost a bearing of witness: but all
a little intellectually muted. This was partly to do
with the pace of what purported to be economic
development, but owed something too to the polit-
ical genius of Bertie Ahern, whose most under-
rated skill was that he knew as Taoiseach to give
the minimum of tribal offence, of gratuitous prov-
ocation, to those not of his clan.
I can perhaps transcend any perception of per-
sonal partisanship by identifying and addressing
what I think is an important historical phenom-
enon: an overwhelming political characteristic of
the years through which we have lived.
So, what was the effect on each of us individ-
ually of the remorseless electoral ascendancy of
Fianna Fáil from ? We all had to choose a
mode of being, a discursive protocol in that Ireland.
We can’t grasp what happened without asking
that question, without pondering the impact on
others of sustained ascendancy, over a very sus-
tained period in a small state, of Fianna Fáil (and
the Progressive Democrats).
In his superb recently-published extended
essay ‘Ill Fares the Land’, the contemporary histo-
rian Tony Judt discusses intellectual inhibitions - in
the wake of the Thatcher and Reagan revolutions
- on the discussion of social democracy (whether
called by that name or not) and on public provi-
sion. He considers that “our disability is discur-
sive”. That discursive disability afflicted economic
debate in Ireland too. One might throw in the pecu-
liarity that many, if not most, Irish people some-
what bizarrely continued throughout to think of
Ireland as, socio-economically, a centre-left state.
My principal purpose, however, is to borrow from
Judt the term ‘discursive disability’ and to apply
it to the dearth of analysis of the effects on civil
society of the reversion to Fianna Fáil hegemony
without alternance from to date.
It may be that the thesis requires a novelist, a
combination perhaps of Colm Tóibín and Ross
O’Carroll Kelly, or awaits a historian still in pri-
mary school. In the initial upswing of the boom,
my own sense was that people wanted to be left
in peace, to enjoy undisturbed, only for a while, a
Fianna Fáil in government
has changed us all
Only the allegiance to the personal over
the political kept us – relatively – sane.
frank callanan
We couldn’t imagine life after Bertie Ahern
“not that one feared to express
opposition to Fianna Fáil or
identify with an opposition
party, but that one did not wish
to appear a raving lunatic”.
modest onset of prosperity, and not be hectored
by church or state, not to be nagged by economists
and intellectuals - never mind opposition politi-
cians. In the longue durée of Irish history and the
shorter course of Irish statehood, the wish for a
momentary respite - to be allowed to come out
from the chill of the shadows and stand for a while
in the sun - was not without poignancy. It is hard,
however, to bring such respites to a close, and the
craving for remission was thoroughly understood
and exploited to the hilt by the then Taoiseach.
My point is that there was, and continues to
be, a striking lack of self-awareness, of reflex-
ive consciousness, of the peculiar state of living
in Ireland over the Ahern decade, and not being
Fianna Fáil or Progressive Democrat. This also had
a marked effect on the media, which had to nego-
tiate this strange psychological state. Some com-
mentators, without necessarily having thought
too much about it, came to regard Fianna Fáil’s
ascendancy over the opposition parties in brutal-
istically Darwinian terms.
The country had seemed to lose the most mod-
est and most under-rated virtue of democracy, the
habit of alternance. The phenomenon was cumu-
lative. Without changes of government, the sense
of the necessity of politics atrophied. The elector-
ate was habituated to Fianna Fáil governance, and
- somewhat unfairly, certainly by the election
- the lack of governmental experience became a
reproach against Fine Gael and Labour.
The abuse of power to which the state tran-
spired to be most vulnerable was the remorseless
use by a government of its powers not for the con-
ventional ends of government but consciously and
systematically to perpetuate itself in office.
Legal and political accountability is achieved
primarily through the political system and the
political culture. The origins of our present dis-
contents are political rather than economic,
something we remain a little shy in acknowledg-
ing. That the Irish state, so jealously nurtured by
successive regimes from , went off the rails
for a decade is in the first instance a political issue,
though the most devastating consequences were
of course economic.
While it might seem a little late now, we still
need a greatly-sharpened alertness to the dan-
gers of the consolidation of quasi-single-party
rule by a combination of grossly irresponsible
and politically-self-interested economic policies,
and the systematic erosion of conventional insti-
tutional constraints.
The Department of Finance was traditionally
the institutional economic check on the policies
of Irish governments, and was from time to time
accused of playing that role to excess. Politicians
routinely complained about the Department of
Finance, but there was a more-or-less good-hu-
moured acceptance of the necessity for its role.
It is instructive to look back to what was
said of the Department in the Dáil in November
(cited in Ronan Fanning’s history of the
Department of Finance). Both John A Costello and
Éamon de Valera, respectively leader of the oppo-
sition and Taoiseach, emphasised the primacy of
the government in relation to economic policy, but
acknowledged its unique role in the administra-
tion of the state. While grumbling about the “wails
and woes” of the Department, Costello paid trib-
ute to the officials of the Department “who have
stood rock-like against the assaults of all sorts of
queer characters in the shape of Ministers since
. They have their point of view. They have
…a very distinct, a very valuable function to ful-
fil in the machinery of government of this State”.
De Valera said:
“…my chief complaint against them is that
they have been trying to be better than the gov-
ernment. But in their anxiety to serve the pub-
lic weal, they have been constantly at pains,
on every occasion on which expenditure is
being contemplated for which the means are
not obvious, to make that fact clear to the
government. I think it is very good that they
should do so. Surely no government wants to
hide its head in the sand and to proceed in a
direction in which there are dangers, if these
dangers can be pointed out to them?”
It is the duty of the Department of Finance to
point out to the Minister for Finance, if he does
not see it himself, and, through him, to point
out to the government, the direction in which
they are going.
These observations relate of course to the
old pre-Economic-Development Department of
Finance. But they are of abiding relevance, and
afford a striking benchmark against which to
measure the induced institutional decadence of
the years from . The erosion of the author-
ity and capacity of the Department of Finance, the
subject of two devastating articles by Eddie Molloy
in the Irish Times of - April , led to and
was epitomised by, the events of September
, around which a veil of silence has been so
tightly drawn.
Most of all we need to
be conscious of the fragil-
ity of civil society in a tiny
island with a centripetal
proclivity to consensus
that is susceptible to gov-
ernmental manipulation.
The modest decen-
cies of holding out, of not
conforming: virtues that
became for a time unfash-
ionable, as manifested in
an Ireland that has passed
into history, are discreetly
celebrated in a non-fiction
piece by John McGahern, a
review of Tim Pat Coogan’s
Michael Collins biography,
Taking us from Abbeylara to Granard, McGahern’s
review opens with a passage on which I end:
“In the town of Granard in the low Cavan/
Longford mountains, a surprisingly attrac-
tive Victorian canopy of iron and glass cov-
ers the entrance to the Greville Arms. Inside, a
large blown-up photograph of Michael Collins
in full uniform hangs over the handsome fire-
place, his hand hovering over his holstered
revolver. All through the decades of Eamon de
Valera’s presidency it hung there arrogantly,
as it still does in Charlie Haughey’s Ireland.
For this was the home territory of Seán
MacEoin, a blacksmith turned guerrilla leader,
and later a general in the Free State Army -
Collins’ close friend; and the Greville Arms was
owned by the Kiernans, Kitty Kiernan being
one of the four glamorous sisters of the hotel,
and the woman who was about to be married
to Michael Collins when he was shot dead in
August 1922 during the Civil War. It is this
allegiance to the local and personal above the
narrow rule of Church and State that has kept
most of the people of Ireland as relatively sane
as they are”.
