Maybe Richie was right after all

Being finance minister in tough times is a dirty job — but someone’s got to do it, former ‘Minister for Hardship’ tells Caroline O’Doherty

COLOUR television swept into Irish homes a year before Richie Ryan became finance minister in the Fine Gael-Labour coalition of 1973, taking over the job when the country’s newly confirmed entry into the EEC made the future as rainbow bright as the programmes broadcast daily from Montrose.

Yet when Ryan became fodder for one of RTÉ’s most famous creations, Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, the segments were aired in black and white. “For reasons of economy,” the tongue-in-cheek message at the bottom of the screen read while Ryan’s alter ego, Richie Ruin, Minister for Hardship, sat shirtless by a candle, lecturing the public on their luck at having leaders so skilled in the art of austerity.