Action figure man
AT first glance, Brian Lenihan would not appear to be a man of the people. He is the furthest thing from Joe six-pack you could possible find in Irish politics. He is as alien to breakfast roll man as a Belvedere head-boy, Trinity scholar and Cambridge class-topper could possibly be.
Ask anyone to describe his character and friend, family, colleague or political opponent will all come up with the same things: “bookish”, “bright”, “extremely clever”, “brainy Brian” or “intellectual”.
Studious, well-mannered and a gentleman, he is the type of guy that teachers would compare you to and your parents would say you should behave like. He’s the type of politician that no one will dig up dirt on.
When our Taoiseach “spliffo Biffo” was smoking pot in the UCD bar, Lenihan was nerding for his Trinity scholarship exams. When a teenage Enda Kenny was having his final walk on the wild side vomiting up after smoking three Woodbines, the young boy Lenihan was learning Latin.
Some in Leinster House have complained of him “speaking down” to them. One TD even described the 49-year-old minister as “an aristocrat of Irish politics”.
But according to those who know him best, Brian is anything but a snob. “The family were all brought up not to be stuffy, not to be put-on. He’s just an ordinary guy, he has no airs and graces. Posh doesn’t come into it,” said his aunt, Mary O’Rourke.
A look back at his early days shows Brian was well acquainted with Joe six-packs, breakfast roll men and even hurley moms well before any of these terms were invented.
Stories of his childhood in Athlone, where he lived until the age of 12, tell of hordes of people coming to his home to air their problems to his father, former Tánaiste, Brian Lenihan senior.
Explaining how his father’s political career impacted on his own childhood, Brian junior once explained: “What I remember very vividly — between 1959, when I was born, and 1971 when we moved to Dublin — my father would do his clinics from home and hundreds of people would come to the house. It wasn’t even called a clinic. You just visited Mr Lenihan at his house. There’d be traffic jams at our house on a Saturday morning as people thronged in from Co Roscommon where my father was a TD.
“A lot of them would sit around the house so the whole house would fill up with people. They would wait in the bedrooms, on the landing, in the sitting room. There’d be lines of cars out side the house,” he remembers.
Charles Haughey once said of Brian Senior “he simply liked people”. For all his apparent intellectual loftiness, some would say the same of Brian junior. Longford TD and Lenihan family friend, Peter Kelly said: “The Lenihans were always people who served people, who wanted to serve people.”
Like his father, the Finance Minster describes himself as “not quite a socialist but a social-democrat”.
Many were waiting to see how those qualities would show in yesterday’s budget, and whether he would stay true to his previously expressed belief that the Government “should ensure social justice in an efficient way” and the State should protect the “have-nots”.
Brian is also a family man. He has one boy and one girl, both in their teens, and is married to circuit court judge, Patricia Ryan. His family are kept out of the limelight and his wife is not part of the political social scene. Brian senior was said to have despised the idea of “political wives” and did not believe in having his wife, Ann, standing beside him in photo opportunities. In the case of Brian junior’s wife, it’s thought she does not like to be involved in politics because of her own legal career.
Despite being the brain of the Dáil, the man who yesterday unveiled one of the toughest budgets in two decades barely scraped a pass in Leaving Cert maths.
“When I was a young boy in the garrison town of Athlone I wanted to be a soldier. In my teens I wasn’t strong at maths or science,” he said in an interview four years ago for the book, The Naked Politician.
“I was interested in English and History. So I suppose that was the beginning of a political germ in a way. I decided to opt for law and right into my early twenties I wanted to be a professional lawyer. I thought politics would be just something I had an interest in, in addition to law rather than instead of it,” he said.
But as the proverb goes, what’s bread in the bones comes out in the flesh. After spending 12 years practising as a barrister and lecturing in law in Trinity College, Brian junior stood in the 1996 Dublin West by-election caused by his father’s death.
This constituency was the home of political corruption. Lenihan’s Fianna Fáil constituency colleague, Liam Lawlor, would subsequently get into trouble with the planning tribunals.
Brian senior, who once called local government “an endemic nursery for corruption” advised Brian junior and his brother, Minister for Integration, Conor Lenihan, to stay well clear of local councils. Go straight to the Dáil, he said, and thus Brian junior escaped any association with the controversy surrounding planning corruption in the area. He has always been a politician of great integrity, according to both friend and foe.
The biography of Brian senior, by James Downey, says Brian junior’s talent was spotted the minute he walked into the Dáil. “Many immediately identified him as a suitable future Taoiseach and were dismayed when Bertie Ahern did not include him in the coalition Government which he formed with the Progressive Democrats after the 1997 general election,” it says.
Ahern had been Brian senior’s campaign manager during the 1990 presidential election. But he left his son idling on the back-benches until it could no longer be justified.
Lenihan’s constituency rival, Labour’s Joan Burton said: “He was very disappointed that he was very visibly passed over by Bertie Ahern for his brother.”
When more and more revelations emerged about Ahern’s finances, leading to his eventual resignation, Lenihan was the only member of cabinet to say publicly that he would not have taken the “whip round” money.
Some of Lenihan’s colleagues believe the degree to which he felt let down by Ahern’s failure to promote him is over-stated.
“He was always anxious to be good at the job. It was just a natural ambition that he had, not that he was put out by Bertie,” said one parliamentary party colleague. “He took it from his father not to be bitter,” said another.
Some believe he is driven by the betrayal of his father during the presidential election campaign when he was “sacked” as Tánaiste by his “friend” of 30 years, Charlie Haughey amid controversy over calls he made to the Áras eight years previously.
“I always felt he was very affected by what happened his father during the campaign,” said Joan Burton. She met Brian for the first time during that campaign when she was campaigning for Mary Robinson and he for his father.
They have got to know and like each other as opponents, both as constituency rivals in Dublin West, and now as they both have the finance brief.
Lenihan junior moved up the ranks quickly after claiming his place in the cabinet in 2005, firstly as Minister for Children.
He soon found his natural home in the Department of Justice where he was extremely comfortable because of his legal background and because his father had once occupied that job.
His former colleague in Trinity, and senior counsel, Gerard Hogan, said: “He loved law and has a huge intellectual interest in all legal matters. But politics is his first love.”
In May, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, appointed him to Finance. For the first time in his life, Lenihan was not the brightest boy in the class.
A few weeks into the job, he told a conference of builders that he had the misfortune of coming into the job when the building boom was coming to an end.
It was meant to be a joke. No one found it funny. It was seen as a major gaffe by someone who should have known better.
Conor Lenihan defended his big brother on RTÉ radio: “When you’re new to a job, I suppose enthusiasm or being sort of spontaneous sometimes, you don’t always adjust to the new discipline of the new job. He was fairly candid and made light of the fact he was Minister for Finance. I think it was somewhat taken out of context,” he said.
Joan Burton took a different view: “He has never made any secret of his ambitions to be Taoiseach. Much of his complaining about being Minister for Finance at the beginning I suspect was fear that it might damage his chances of being Taoiseach,” she said.
It seemed to some that Brian might not have been up to one of the toughest jobs in the country. But that was when things were still relatively easy. Some colleagues believe that when the going got tough, he thrived.
His decisiveness in announcing the rescue package for the banks impressed his party colleagues. Even those who had, at the start, questioned his suitability to finance.
“It took him a while to find his feet but he is really coming into his own now,” said one colleague.
“He relishes a challenge,” said another. “He is not one bit afraid to make decisions. Once he makes them, he follows through with them. One thing I have noticed is that he is determined that people know where he’s coming from,” he said.
Mary O’Rourke said she was not worried about her nephew ahead of his unveiling of the budget. “He is very capable. I have absolutely no fear about how he will get on. He is very strong,” she said.
Former Finance Minister, Labour’s Ruairí Quinn is not so sure: “His academic qualifications are impeccable but he has no commercial experience and he has no ministerial experience and that worries me,” he said in advance of the budget.
In the 12 years since entering the Dáil, Lenihan has undoubtedly become one of the country’s brightest and most respected politicians. But, as has been said a lot in recent weeks: we are living in strange times.
Whether he is playing it blind, or playing a blinder in dealing with economic and financial turmoil, people cannot really make up their minds and only time will tell.
Some say yesterday’s budget will define Brian Lenihan’s political legacy. It won’t. How his gamble with financial institutions plays out and how the economy stands at the time of the next general election will tell whether Brian Lenihan really is the smartest and bravest soldier of them all.
* The earning band for the standard tax rate jumps significantly from €28,000 to €29,400 for single earners and €56,000 to €58,800 for double-income married couples, meaning more money in pockets.
* First time buyers purchasing a home up to the value of €317,500 do not have to pay stamp duty, costing the government €60m a year in lost revenue.
* Increase of €12 per week for pensioners brings the non-contributory pension to €148 per week and the contributory pension to €163.
* No hike on the price of a pint or cigarettes.
* The band for the 20% tax rate increases from €29,400 to €32,000 for a single person and €58,800 to €64,000 for a two-income married couple.
* A new early childhood allowance is introduced amounting to €1,000 per year for every child under six.
* A new child-minding relief is introduced so no tax is paid on earnings of up to €10,000 per year for minding children.
* For the second consecutive year there no change in excise duty on alcohol.
* The 20% standard tax band is widened from €32,000 a year to €34,000 for single earners and from €64,000 to €68,000 in a give-away pre-election budget.
* Child benefit increases to €160.
* Pension payments break the €200 a week barrier.
* Paid maternity leave increases by four weeks to 16 weeks.
* Carers’ allowance increases from €180 per week to €200 for people looking after someone under 65 and from €200 to €218 a week for those looking after someone over 65.
* No change on the price of a pint in this generous budget.
* 20% tax band increases to €35,400 for single earners, €70,800 for married two earner couples.
* PRSI ceiling increases from €48,800 to €50,700.
* Supplement for children under six increases by €100 to €1,100 a year.
* Contributory pensions up €14 a week to €223.30 and non-contributory pensions up by €12 to €212.
* Carers’ allowance up €14 a week to €232 a week for those over 66 and €214 for those under 66.
* Cancer services get extra €35m.
Compiled by Mary Regan
