Just Mary (20 page)

And what of the government itself during this period? Well, it was proving, under John Bruton, to be the opposite of what people had expected. Bruton was able to tame his impatience and learned
to live with good grace with Proinsias De Rossa and Dick Spring. In turn, the various Ministers seemed to be attending to their jobs with great dedication and by and large, the country was
beginning to gradually move out of the economic decline of the early 1990s. In fact, my feeling was then, and still is, that if that Fine Gael/Labour coalition had been able to hold on until the
full five years were up, they would have won through the next time too. By 1997, however, the momentum was building generally towards a General Election that summer. This was indeed to be the case
and soon we were all caught up in the fray of fighting for our constituencies. As for the Progressive Democrats at that time, they had a new leader in Mary Harney and during our two-and-a-half
years in Opposition, she and Bertie Ahern had worked together very well in putting forward policies and in flailing the government on a daily basis, as was their role. Mary was quite a star, in
fact, and led many Opposition campaigns with great vigour and success.

Meanwhile, we at Fianna Fáil ploughed on and it was good to see cordial relations gradually being re-established within the party, and a more even, more harmonious mood take hold. In
theory, the next General Election was not due until November or December of 1997. But then, who wanted a December election? And so gradually, it became the accepted wisdom that the General Election
would be held in early June of that year. We were soon working towards that and ensuring that throughout the country the Fianna Fáil organisation was primed and in good working order.
Constituency conventions were held and the usual wars broke out between factions, but it wasn’t too long before the candidates were in place.

It was sunny weather as our campaign gathered momentum, and Bertie sailed around the country like a blessed icon. The girls kissed him and he kissed them, from Galway to Kerry and Dublin to
Donegal. He was a beaming, affable hero and hailed as such. It was as if the country was ready to be entertained again, and Bertie showed every evidence of being the one to do that. Perhaps he was
helped in this by the fact that the three amigos, John Bruton, Proinsias De Rossa and Dick Spring, seemed to form a very stern triumvirate as they gave their governmental press conferences and as
they moved about their various campaigns. Jollity did not seem to be the order of the day with them, that seemed certain!

On the eve of the General Election, I can remember doing an interview for
RTÉ
’s
Six O’clock News
, in which I said it had been a sunny and
happy election campaign. So indeed it proved for me and for many other candidates in the party throughout the country. Fianna Fáil won handsomely, with 77 seats, and decided to go ahead and
form a government with a small number of
PDS
. Here Bertie showed his distinguishing skill as a political diplomat and facilitator between different parties with separate
agendas, and sought to bring on board the Independents as well, so that he and we would have an extra cushion as a bulwark for government. These were skills he had been able to hone during his time
as Minister for Labour in the late 1980s, when a key part of his role was to bring together groups with opposing interests into a workable and mutually beneficial cooperation.

Labour had not had a good election, and it remains my belief that it was because they had ‘crossed the floor’, so to speak, in the way that they had. Fine Gael had had a so-so result
but it was Fianna Fáil who triumphed. In forming his Cabinet, Bertie invited me to take on the role of Minister for Public Enterprise, in relation to which many of the state agencies were
amalgamated into one government portfolio. Mary Harney of the
PDS
was offered the position of Minister for Private Enterprise. We were both to have offices in Kildare
Street: Mary would be in charge of nurturing and encouraging employment growth in all of the private businesses in Ireland; I would be responsible for all the state businesses, including
CIÉ
, An Post,
ESB
, Bord Gáis, Aer Lingus and many more. I was very happy to accept the honour given to me, and so, from their bases in
Kildare Street, the two Marys would become the new tsars of business in Ireland.

Chapter
11

I
approached my new role as Minister for Public Enterprise in a way which for the most part was very much in line with my own instincts —
which were and have always been inclined in favour of the interests of the workers and the unemployed, as opposed to those of big business. I suppose these were values I had inherited from my
father, whose own thinking, as I have recounted earlier in this book, was greatly influenced by the ideals of socialism — even though he ran Gentex very successfully for 20 years, employing
at times well over a thousand people. For these reasons too, I had always been keen at various stages in my career to consolidate the strong links I had with the various trade unions — this
was certainly the case during my time as Minister for Education, as Minister of State for Labour Affairs and indeed later in Opposition, as Shadow Minister for Employment and Enterprise.

I remember well my first day in the Department in Kildare Street in June 1997. The Secretary General for Public Enterprise at that time was John Loughrey, and he met me on arrival. Then there
was the usual drill when a new Minister arrives in office, by now familiar to me — meeting the various Assistant Secretaries throughout the Department and their key staff; the handover of the
files for me to peruse, and so on. This time, there was a very crowded agenda indeed and I made it my first priority to set about meeting the boards of all the ‘semi-states’ (i.e. the
state-sponsored companies and businesses). In the days which followed, I would go to meet with them at their various
HQS
and I was able to engage in some good initial
discussions.

It seemed to me quite early on that one of the most immediate causes for concern was the
CIÉ
group of public transport companies, and in particular, Iarnród
Éireann —
CIÉ
rail. When I first met with their board and the then Chief Executive, I was party to a number of complaints — justified, it seemed
— about the lack of finance being made available by government for the essential repair work needing to be done as a matter of urgency on railways throughout Ireland. I became very worried
about this because I had the example before me of a number of years earlier when, in August 1980 and during a time when Albert Reynolds was Minister for Transport, there had been a terrible rail
crash at Buttevant. On that occasion, 18 people lost their lives and 62 were injured. And yet for many years, nothing had been done to invest money in maintaining and updating our railway tracks or
systems.

It seemed that some of my worst fears had been confirmed when, on Saturday 8 November 1997, I got word at home that there had been a rail crash at Knockcroghery, a village about 12 miles away
from Athlone, on the way to Roscommon. I went straight there, to find a scene of chaos. Thankfully no one had been injured severely, and there were just a few minor casualties. But it was clear
that that rail crash could easily have been a rail disaster. The train had just come out of a level crossing when it came off the rails. Luckily it had been flanked by two high grass sidings, with
the result that, even though it had been derailed, it had just come to rest against one of these. The train had been quite full with students and civil servants heading back from Dublin to the
various towns in Mayo for the weekend. As I said, there were no serious injuries — some passengers were brought to Roscommon hospital, but by the next day they had all been released.

The crash and the later findings troubled me greatly. It seemed that the cause of the accident was a faulty track which had given way, and that the track in question had been laid well over a
hundred years earlier. The following Tuesday, I went to Cabinet to give a full account of the accident and I sought permission to employ outside engineering experts to investigate fully the precise
detail of what had happened and what should consequently now be done to render our trains safe.

A team of engineers, headed by a very competent Scotsman, was duly recruited via a tendering process, and they spent some weeks carrying out a very thorough investigation. Once this was
completed, they came to visit me in my office, laid out the results and issued a very stark and comprehensive warning. They had done spot checks throughout Ireland and had concluded that there
could at any time be a similar crash on any of our main track lines — and further, that if this should happen, the likelihood was that the result would be a deadly one. It seemed clear that
the previous government would have been aware of the extent of the danger too, but in the straitened economic circumstances in which they found themselves, they had not been able to take any
action. The ominous feeling I had had in relation to
CIÉ
was justified indeed, and now it fell to me to do something about it.

I quickly brought a detailed Memorandum to Cabinet and said quite clearly that if money to do full remedial work on all the rail tracks of Ireland was not forthcoming, then I could not stay on
as Minister in charge. What had always amazed me, in fact, was the very grudging support that railways got in Ireland, as compared to the situation in the
UK
and even more
so in relation to countries such as France, Germany and Belgium, where the railway systems had always been hugely financed. But of course, as Minister I knew that the difficulty for Ireland was we
had neither the long distances nor the large population needed for a railway transport system to be a success. However, whether they were used by one person or a thousand, it was also clear that
many of our railway tracks were well over a hundred years old and needed massive remedial work, as confirmed by the Scottish engineer’s report.

Cabinet was quickly persuaded that the job should be done, and we set up a Railway Safety Committee in the Department, with Pat Mangan, the then Assistant Secretary, being put in charge. I had
and retain a great respect for Pat: he was one of those civil servants who worked at his job morning, noon and night and was full of integrity and sound advice. All of the staff in the Department
took to this work with energy and enthusiasm: I think they had a sense that for the first time in many years, there was someone in charge who was at last going to do something for the railways of
Ireland.

We soon had a detailed proposal which I could put forward to Cabinet for approval, and for which funding was then agreed in principle. The Railway Safety Programme was conceived as having three
distinct phases and would run over a total of 12 years. The first programme would be implemented from 1999 to 2003, and require a budget of €661 million; the second programme, with a projected
budget of €512 million, would run from 2004 to 2008; the final phase was to be put into effect between 2009 and 2013 and would require a spend of €268 million.

And so we embarked straight away on the first phase, and a four-year programme of remedial work on the rail tracks throughout the entire country began. I retained the services of the fine
Scottish engineer who had advised us initially and he proved invaluable. But of course it was a thankless task in many ways. Yes, all of the country agreed it should be done and it was done,
painstakingly and properly and safely — but to the external observer, what was to be seen in terms of tangible results? There were no shiny new trains. There were no sleek new railway
stations. There were no new advances as such, because all the money was ploughed directly into the ground and into the essential repair work on the tracks. My satisfaction, however, lay in the
knowledge that we were making the railways safe. Safety in matters of transport was my guiding star and I never made any excuse for that. Why should I? If you are offering a public service which
involves transport, well then, safety above everything else should be your motto.

On a personal note, having been brought up right alongside the
CIÉ
station in Athlone, the railway had been central to my childhood in many senses. The railway
station was exactly opposite the Gentex complex of buildings among which we lived, and indeed it became part of my playground. It was the playground too of the children of the Lally family. Martin
Lally Snr was the Station Master and I can picture him standing on the platform station in his pristine uniform, raising his hat to every woman passenger. Old-fashioned maybe, but he was the salt
of the earth and took such pride in his job, a pride which came across in the respect he gave to his workers and to all the passengers who travelled in and out of Athlone. My home town was quite a
railway hub, as you can imagine, and it was pivotal in railway transport terms. Incidentally, my bridesmaid on my wedding day was Nuala Lally, the mother of the new Director of Public Prosecutions,
Claire Loftus.