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
