Authors: Mary O'Rourke
But of course the biggest obstacle to the policy’s overall success — and one which clearly had not been anticipated at the planning stage — was the refusal on the part of many
civil servants to go along with the proposed relocations. They dug in their heels and obstructed these moves in any way they could. They simply said ‘no’ and no trade union or
Ministerial dictat would make any difference to this decision. (And it should be said that no trade union dictat was forthcoming in any case.) If they didn’t want to go, they simply
wouldn’t go. And so gradually, bit by bit, decentralisation ran into the sand.
When looking at where we as a government went wrong in the years leading up to the downturn, it would be naïve to deny that there were aspects of our collaboration with our political
partners in government which contributed to a lack of effectiveness. As we have already seen, Fianna Fáil had a long-standing coalition arrangement with the
PDS
which
had been sustained through a succession of governments. There were certainly positive sides to this collaboration. Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney had forged a very strong and good relationship
together, which went back to 1997 and continued through 2002 and then 2007. The two genuinely liked one another and Mary Harney proved a loyal and workmanlike comrade for Bertie and Fianna
Fáil to have in government. In 2004, Mary had looked herself for the punishing portfolio of Health, leaving the Department of Enterprise and Employment behind her, where she had had many
successes, and had at one point been able to oversee almost full employment in Ireland.
Mary Harney said that she wanted to bring about a journey of reform and recovery within the health service, but little did she know of the daily vicissitudes which awaited her. Michael McDowell
was also a great colleague for us to have in the coalition. During my Cabinet years 1997 to 2002, I found him as a member of Cabinet and indeed Attorney General to be rock-solid, professional and
always helpful. In 2002, when Michael became Minister for Justice, I experienced for myself as Leader of the Seanad the breadth of his intellect and his forensic attention to detail. My fellow
Senators and I were fortunate in that he brought many of his important Justice Bills, once they had cleared Cabinet, to the Seanad rather than to the Dáil.
In 2006, Mary Harney surrendered the leadership of the
PD
Party and Michael McDowell took it over. The
PDS
, such as they were throughout the
country, felt perhaps that the constant barrage against Mary Harney in Health would not augur well for their party in the forthcoming election. In the General Election of 2007 they got a scorching,
returning only Mary Harney and Noel Grealish in Galway. Subsequently, the
PDS
disbanded in 2008 and Mary continued in office as an Independent member of the Cabinet. There
were some terrific
PDS
who lost their seats during that election, but for me, the person who was most sorely missed from political life was Liz O’Donnell. Yes, she was
glamorous and wonderful, and she was also sound and steady and had a lot to offer.
While we had the benefit of these strong and very worthwhile connections among the
PDS
, there is no escaping the fact that some aspects of their central philosophy and
the concrete measures which this engendered — such as policies on taxation and financial regulation — undermined our effectiveness during a crucial time in government.
We had another partner in the coalition during our last term in government, in the form of the Green Party. What did those of us on the backbenches, the rank-and-file of Fianna Fáil, make
of the Greens, you might wonder? In the beginning, all looked well. Bertie was able to claim that Fianna Fáil had always been a green movement and that by going into coalition with the
Greens, we were in fact going back to our roots! Not many of us actually believed that, but in the heady, triumphant mood of forming a new government, many were prepared to suspend their
disbelief.
John Gormley was leader of the Greens, and he was dogged, single-minded and joyless. I realise it might seem an odd thing for me to say, but there was very little of humour among our Green
partners. As time went on, from 2007 onwards, there was very little to be humorous about, but even from the beginning, they were persistent and dogged. They unstintingly got their points put
forward in the Joint Programme for Government, as had always been the way with our coalition partners, but we soon began to feel more and more uneasy and stifled as their partners. Yet it must be
said too that Brian Lenihan consistently drew from the steady support and friendship of Eamon Ryan at Cabinet.
I hope that some of the reflections and observations above go some way to clarifying my views on what went so wrong for us as a country and for Fianna Fáil as a party in recent years. As
I have said earlier, the 2011 General Election dealt us a massive blow, not only in a substantial loss of seats, but also in terms of severe damage to our reputation and standing as a party. While
I believe that this vilification of our party is grossly unfair to our rank-and-file and the many members who have always conducted themselves honourably and given of their best to the Irish people
over many years, it cannot be denied that some of those who held key positions have not always acted with the same integrity.
The twists and turns of the Mahon Tribunal, and its successive revelations over the 15 long years for which it ran, could not but have a devastating effect on the credibility and public
reputation of Fianna Fáil and those who headed the party. I’ll never forget that day in early April 2004 when I appeared before the tribunal myself to give evidence. I had been
summoned there to give my account of that pivotal meeting which Tom Gilmartin said had happened in the Dáil in February 1989, and after which it seemed that he had been asked, in a
bare-faced and blatant way, for a huge sum of cash for access to Ministers. The tribunal had written to everyone whom Gilmartin said he met in the Dáil on the day in question, but, as Jody
Corcoran remarked in a lead article in the
Sunday Independent
just prior to the day I was to testify, it seemed that I was the only one who remembered meeting Gilmartin on that occasion.
As it transpired, I was the only one prepared to tell the truth.
Appearing before the tribunal was very intimidating and I was glad to be accompanied and represented so ably there by my dear friend and legal advisor, Hugh Campbell. The court room was in a
huge complex of buildings. When you were called, you had to put your hand on the Bible in front of you before you gave your testimony. I was in the Seanad by that stage, where as I have said, I had
the excellent Eamonn McCormack as my Private Secretary. Eamonn would later tell me that, the day after I had been at the tribunal, an up-and-coming government member at the time had stopped him as
he was passing, saying, ‘So, what do we make of your lady, running up to the tribunal, causing trouble for the Taoiseach and inventing stories?’ Eamonn had simply replied, ‘She
told the truth — and if you don’t tell the truth in a tribunal, it is perjury.’
Eamonn and I had already discussed this, and had decided that this is what he should say to anyone who brought up the matter with him. The one person who never mentioned the tribunal to me was
Bertie, which I suppose in hindsight is pretty damning in its own way. He said nothing directly to me, but I knew he was very annoyed about it. Typical of Bertie, his way of dealing with it was to
have others say that my testimony was all an invention: that I was losing it and didn’t know what I was talking about. In light of this, I was very pleased that when the final report of the
tribunal was in due course made public, it stated, in relation to my testimony: ‘The Tribunal in particular noted, and accepted, the clear recollection Mrs O’Rourke had of the meeting
and, in particular, her vivid memory of Mr Flynn having invited her to join the meeting and the manner in which he effected his albeit perfunctory introduction to her of Mr Gilmartin. The Tribunal
was satisfied that Mrs O’Rourke’s evidence in relation to the meeting was entirely truthful.’
While others had allegedly forgotten all about it, the details of that particular day in February 1989 were etched clearly in my mind. There wasn’t a meeting as such — it was more
that Pádraig Flynn had had Tom Gilmartin brought into the Dáil and was doing his ‘Mr Big’ act, hauling Ministers in to meet him by way of demonstrating his own importance
to Gilmartin: ‘Here is the Minister for Education’, and so on and so forth. No wonder I remembered it so clearly, with the declamatory way in which Flynn was carrying on! I was called
in and there were five or six others in the room — it was more of an informal gathering than an official meeting. There was Ray Burke, Bertie Ahern, Pádraig Flynn of course, Brian
Lenihan Snr (by the time the tribunal came around, Brian was no longer alive), Gerry Collins and me. As Pádraig fetched me in, he was saying in a big, booming voice, ‘Mr Gilmartin,
this is our lady Minister, the eminent Mary O’Rourke for Education — what do you make of that, now?’ Gilmartin had a kind comment for me — he had remembered that my mother
had recently died and he said, ‘I have already said to Brian here and I would like to say to you too, I am sorry for your recent loss. The Scanlans were a fine family.’ So Gilmartin
registered with me because of this: as I said at the tribunal, you remember people who sympathise with you.
I didn’t stay very long after this introduction, but left to go about my business. According to Tom Gilmartin’s later account, a little later that day outside the room where we met,
a fellow had come up to him and said, ‘You are going to be helped — sure, look at all the Ministers you have met. You will be helped every step of the way, but we need money for
access.’ Now I didn’t see that person myself, as I was no longer there by that time. And I genuinely had no idea what Pádraig Flynn was doing that day — I thought he was
just being Pádraig Flynn: a big, bombastic buffoon.
Over and above the Mahon Tribunal and all that it brought to light about certain individuals in the party, I can attest to the fact that in a more general sense there has been in recent years a
degree of disintegration in the social cohesion and sense of individual and collective responsibility within Fianna Fáil. One field in which I experienced this for myself was the whole area
of party fundraising — an activity which has always been a knotty issue for political parties in general. Before going any further however, it is appropriate that I should emphasise that fact
that all political parties undertake various fundraising activities. They need to keep their parties afloat, and in Ireland, particularly as regards the larger parties of Fianna Fáil and
Fine Gael, fundraising has always been a necessary and unavoidable part of the political process.
My own experience of party fundraising goes back to 1993, at a time when Fianna Fáil and Labour were in government together under Albert Reynolds as Taoiseach. I was Minister of State for
Labour Affairs to Ruairi Quinn as Minister for Employment and Enterprise — a collaboration which, as I have said earlier, I very much enjoyed. During this period, Bertie Ahern was Treasurer
of the Fianna Fáil organisation. It was well-known in the party generally that we were very much in debt at Fianna Fáil Head Office.
One day when I was working in my office in the Department, I received a telephone call from a man who introduced himself as Tony Kenna. He said that he was ringing at Bertie Ahern’s behest
and was asking for an appointment with me. We duly fixed a time and day for a meeting and he came to see me as planned. His tale was that Bertie Ahern, as Treasurer of Fianna Fáil, was
trying to drum up financial support so that he would clear the debt at the party’s
HQ
. To that end they were asking all of the Fianna Fáil Ministers to become
engaged in a fundraising effort. Tony then proceeded to put two possible courses of action to me, emphasising all the while that the first one was the more desirable. This was that I would host a
dinner party in a private house for, say, 10 or 12 carefully selected guests, and at which either Albert Reynolds or Bertie Ahern would be in attendance for the evening. I would act as hostess, and
each guest would come along, eat their dinner and socialise, and then leave an envelope with a donation for Fianna Fáil at the end of the night. The alternative course of action Tony was
proposing was that I could run a golf competition within my constituency, the proceeds of which would go to Fianna Fáil
HQ
.
My immediate response was to ask, regarding the first option, whether I myself would be expected to cook the dinner for the glitzy event in the private house. Tony quickly assured me that no,
the owner of the glamorous house would arrange for the cooking of the glitzy dinner: my job was just to be there as a Fianna Fáil Minister, to be pleasant to everyone and, putting it
crudely, to rake in the cash for the party. I didn’t like the idea of it then and I don’t like the idea of it now. However, as regards the alternative option, the difficulty for me was
that I knew nothing whatsoever about golf. Despite the fact that I was brought up in the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone, right in the middle of a golf course, I had never so much as taken a golf club
in my hand! To be honest, I had always thought of golf as a waste of time and effort — you hit a ball and nobody hits it back to you; you walk after it and you hit it again: where was the
point in that? Before all of the diehard golfers descend upon me in outrage, I have to stress that this was just my own take on golf and I didn’t expect everyone to feel as I did!
Anyway, I told Tony Kenna that I would have a think about these options and let him know of my decision in due course. That weekend at home, I discussed the matter with Enda and
Mícheál Ó’Faoláin. The three of us decided against the dinner party possibility — none of us liked the sound of it at all. My difficulty with it was that I
would be required to hold out my hand and take the envelope. Although being in a posh house with glamorous people eating a glitzy dinner might have had a certain appeal, I just didn’t see
myself in that role. So we decided that we would run the golf competition. Enda had in fact played golf some years earlier and Mícheál was himself a dedicated and indeed a very good
golfer.