Ready to take on every challenge but finally succumbed to ill health service
The Tánaiste’s departure from centre stage must also set some kind of record as she even managed to keep that rarest of things in politics — a secret.
Though struggling to master the task she set herself of turning the health service around, Ms Harney’s grip on the PD rein’s of power appeared tighter than ever after slapping down a clumsy leadership putsch by Justice Minister Michael McDowell in the early summer.
Yet after three decades near the heart of Government, her personal epiphany took place during three weeks in Italy with her husband Brian as she finally decided there was more to life than politics.
Indeed, the 53-year-old has been so consumed by politics even her wedding ceremony in 2001 was timed to fit in around party and Government meetings that day.
That would not have seemed odd to a woman whose life has revolved around the Oireachtas since Taoiseach Jack Lynch appointed her to the Seanad in 1977 at the age of 24, after she missed out on a Fianna Fáil seat in that year’s general election.
She made it into the Dáil in 1981, but became disillusioned with Charles Haughey’s leadership, emerging as a key member of the Gang of 22 as she was expelled from the party for voting in favour of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. It was this split that helped give birth to the Progressive Democrats, with Des O’Malley at the helm.
Ms Harney relished the party’s brand of neo-liberal economic toughness and determination to bring some fresh ideological edge to an Irish political divide forged in the civil war.
When the PD’s entered government with Fianna Fáil in 1989 she became Minister of State for Environmental Protection and banned bituminous coal in Dublin thus ending the capital’s notorious smog.
With the PD’s again in opposition, Ms Harney became the first woman to lead an Irish political party in October 1993. The 1997 election campaign was a bruising learning curve for her as Ms Harney’s harsh comments on single mothers and the poor caused outrage and helped damage the party’s performance.
Lengthy negotiations with Fianna Fáil resulted in a coalition propped up by independents which few gave much chance of survival.
Installed as the first woman Tánaiste and Enterprise Minister, the coalition endured and became the first Government since 1969 to win reelection, with the PDs doubling their strength from four to eight TDs in 2002.
Controversy engulfed her again when she was forced to apologise for using a Government jet to fly to Leitrim and open an off-licence for a friend. However, her gaffes stand out because there have been so few of them over the past 30 years in public life.
Born in Ballinasloe, Galway in 1953, her farming family soon moved to Newcastle, Co Dublin, where her parents pushed her to achieve. She did not disappoint them, entering Trinity College and then briefly working as a teacher at Castleknock College before her rapid elevation to the Seanad.
Ms Harney’s former cabinet colleague and current EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy believes her to be one of the outstanding politicians of her generation.
“In ministerial office, she has had tangible and lasting achievements in every area in which she has worked — the environment, enterprise, trade, employment, and more recently health.
“Her strong will and determined leadership have been the hallmarks of her tenure in office. She has never shirked from taking on vested interests, however powerful, when she considered them detrimental to the wider public interest,” he said.
Not a view shared by the Irish Nurses Organisation which passed a motion of no confidence in her last May — proof her reputation has taken a severe battering since she sought and was given the combative cabinet post of health in 2004.
Ms Harney was determined to inject business-like steel into a health service so unwieldy no one knew exactly how many people it employed. However, trench warfare with consultants, a shortage of acute hospital beds, and A&E wards littered with patients on trolleys has left her looking at times completely overwhelmed by the challenge.
Though keen to stay on in health, Ms Harney knows that depends on the good grace of her likely successor, Michael McDowell with who she has always had a complicated relationship.
It must be a strange feeling for Ms Harney to suddenly not be master of her political destiny.
