Health hazard
WHEN I tell people I’m interviewing Micheál Martin, most of them arch their eyebrows and come back with the line that was funny the first time we heard it but is clichéd now: “Ah, Micheál, the former future leader.”
It’s a cheap line but you can’t help think about it as you wait in the ante-room outside the minister’s office in Kildare Street. Bedecking the walls are the portraits of former Ministers for Enterprise and Employment (or Industry and Commerce, as they were once known).
The department has been almost as important a stopping-point as Finance for future Taoisigh. Jack Lynch is on the wall. So is Albert Reynolds. John Bruton and Seán Lemass complete the group.
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Mr Martin’s portrait will hang there. But will he be grouped with the bestsellers above, or with those in the remaindered section? The latter include the likes of George Colley and Des O’Malley who could-have, might-have been; some who went nowhere, like Pádraig Flynn; and a pile of half-forgotten patriots from the pre-war years.
Mr Martin’s main problem is the one that faced actor Tom Hickey after RTÉ’s long-running rural soap The Riordans came to an end. For years afterwards, he was plagued by people saying ‘howya Benjy’ to him. He lost roles because people would see him in a play and immediately exclaim: ‘That’s Benjy Riordan. What’s he doing there?’
Mr Martin’s own soap could be called the Angola Legacy.
Eight months after transferring from the Department of Health, he spends a lot of his time not talking about Enterprise.
In particular, there is the nursing home charges controversy, an issue which continues to dog him six months later. The opposition witch hunt against him has continued despite the finding of John Travers that - to all intents and purposes - responsibility lay elsewhere.
When it comes to succession races, there’s almost zero dynamic within Fianna Fáil. The Blair-Brown tensions that keep Britain’s New Labour on its toes is absent in Fianna Fáil under Bertie Ahern. His leadership is unquestioned.
There’s a bit of territory marking going on the shadows. For years, only two names figured - Brian Cowen and Micheál Martin. In the past year or so, Dermot Ahern and Mary Hanafin have also come into the frame.
However, for Mr Martin, the nursing homes issue is widely perceived to have damaged him. The Labour Party, in particular, has honed in on the clear conflict of versions of his knowledge of it between him and the former secretary general of the Department, Michael Kelly.
If the past six months have taken their toll on Mr Martin, he does not show it. There was one flash of irritation during his four hours of questioning in the Health Committee on Travers. In this hour-long interview, he shows oodles of the calm, the brightness, the command-of-detail that have brought him this far. But has Travers shot his bolt? No, is his response. “If people read Travers, it’s a very clear and good account of what happened over 20 years. I was 16 years of age when this thing started, when the wrong decision was taken in 1976.
“The opposition has deliberately tried to cloud that. From a politically opportunistic point of view, they have brought everything back to a one-year period. They then tried to stretch it to 2001 and that’s not stacking up.
“I would be wrong to say I’m not annoyed at all that has happened. It’s something that one would not wish on anybody. But that said, the Travers report says clearly that no adequate briefing was given to any minister from 1976 onwards.”
Responding to the impact it has on his own political career, he takes a long view.
“In politics, events happen and issues happen that do have an impact on you as an individual politician. I think you have to meet those as they come and deal with them and move on. That’s a philosophy that I follow.”
But what about his insistence that he accepted no responsibility? “Well, that question was deliberately asked to get that reaction by the opposition. Some people saw two minutes of a four-hour session. They only got a glimpse of it.
“I would be damned if I had to accept political responsibility for something that happened in 1976. I really would have a problem with that.
“Equally, there’s a hundred ways you can argue as to how this evolved. (Travers) equally said that politicians of all creed and colour should have probed more deeply. I did say to the committee that I accepted that.”
His detractors say that, in a larger context, his time at Health was marked by more indecision than decision.
“I took some tough decisions,” he argues. “I took the first major decision to turn the health services around in 30 years, the decision to abolish health boards and establish the HSE. In time, that will have an impact on the quality of service that people are getting across the country, too. People will be getting an equitable service.
“There are pluses and minuses and the minus is the nursing home charges issue.”
In the stormy waters of it all, there were ripples that his relations with Mary Harney was strained, that there was a lot of spinning and counter-spinning going on. That he denies flatly.
“It’s over-stated. It’s understandable. People have seen the juxtaposition of the nursing home charges issue and the Gama issue. A whole load of commentators have surmised that he is doing Gama because Harney has done nursing homes.”
But were there not specific accusations that his people had leaked documents that were unflattering of Harney’s commitment to investigating early allegations of Gama workers being ripped off? “There was one report that I took issue with because it was wrong. I think we have indicated through independent channels there was no way we could have leaked anything because we had nothing to leak at that time.
“People looking in want to create a rift,” he says, before adding that he and Harney “get on very well.”
In all of that, you forget that he is Minister for Enterprise. This week, he hopes the public will allow him return to his new brief, when he publishes the report of the Consumer Strategy Group on Wednesday.
The major policy initiative that will come out of it will be the creation of aNational Consumer Agency. This, he promises, will have teeth. “It will give a strong focused and coherent voice to the consumer in Ireland.”
The group’s report was very clear that it was needed, to ensure that there was proper advocacy, research and enforcement there for the consumer.
The other major change that’s likely to happen - although subject to a short period of consultation - will be the scrapping of the Groceries Order.
Mr Martin points out that the group has made a cogent argument for changing the status quo and that those who want its retention will have to make a powerful case. In addition, there is the added stumbler that allowing below-invoice selling will require primary legislation. But there’s no doubt that he feels strongly that change is required.
In terms of what he wants to do with his portfolio, he has ambitious plans.
His first key agenda, he says, is helping shape industrial policy for the next 10 years, with a particular emphasis on the indigenous enterprise agenda.
“We are creating a new division to create more Irish multinationals and to scale up more Irish companies beyond the €20 million mark. The areas we will focus on are marketing, internationalisation, research and development.
“Internationalisation helps them break into new markets. The Enterprise Strategy Group report (published last year and which compared the performance of indigenous companies unfavourably with foreign companies in Ireland) is critical, maybe overly-critical, of the last decade.
“We won’t be in the business for low-cost manufacturing in the future,” he says. “We want to develop partnerships with multinational on key research projects that will benefit.”
There’s a notion that’s gone abroad recently that the department has neglected the employment part of its title, particularly when it comes to the rights of foreign workers. Mr Martin puts the argument in context.
“In relation to Gama, the pace took everybody by surprise. In 1999, there were 6,000 foreign workers with permits. In 2003, this climbed to 40,000.
“I accept that one of the reasons we decided to increase the number of labour inspectors by 10 was to concentrate on migrant workers.
“It needs policing to make sure Irish labour law is applied equally to everybody.”
HE does agree there were lapses. “There are lessons to be learned from the Gama story. It’s in the High Court at the moment. I cannot say a whole lot yet about it.”
He does not have a finished view on whether or not Ireland should introduce a Morrison Visa type programme.
“Is migration policy too narrowly focused on just economic needs of the country? That opens up a new story about what can Ireland realistically absorb and receive in terms of numbers coming up in the country.
“In essence, 90% (of asylum seekers) are found to be economic migrants. We are still in uncharted territory on this in terms of immigration policy. These are issues that are not closed by any means.”
As for a Morrison programme? “Not in the short term. It’s a possibility down the road. I would argue that we are the most liberal country in Europe in terms of our access to people from the accession states.”
Mr Martin has always been seen as being on the left of Fianna Fáil. In 1992, he was one of the few TDs who openly welcomed a coalition with Labour, which he saw as closest to Fianna Fáil on the political spectrum. Now, his view has evolved.
“Coming out of the last election, I would have been a very strong advocate for coalescing with the PDs again. People are saying we should have gone with independents.
“The Labour Party does not impress me much currently. In any event, they have moved into the economic space of the Government’s.”
Has politics and Government taken its toll on Mr Martin? There’s a picture of him standing on a box outside his house in Turner’s Cross in 1997. The youthful Micheál is no more.
“One looks wistfully at the photograph,” he laughs.
Has it been a hard eight years? “It has, of course. It’s been tough. Ministerial jobs are tough. You don’t have as much time with your family and kids that you want to.
“I’m lucky Mary is understanding enough, and understands the political world and the stresses. The fact that you are the active decision-taker is a huge privilege.
“There’s a lot of enjoyment from that, in shaping people’s lives for the better,” he says.
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