McCreevy wins Person of Year award for all the wrong reasons

By Fergus Finlay

Who do you think had the most influence on us all in 2002? (And it doesn't have to be positive influence Time Magazine once had Adolf Hitler as its Person of the Year.) Was it Keane or McCarthy, two people who polarised the nation during the summer? For weeks we could talk of little else. It seems a bit futile now, like one of those family rows where everyone is a bit resentful still but no-one can quite remember how it started.

Or was it Dunphy, who sometimes seemed like the most passionate commentator on the whole affair, and other times like a player? Love him or hate him, most of us who listened to him frequently are already beginning to miss him.

We may in the end come to judge his influence more by its absence.

Those three personalities, of course, had one thing in common. Their influence was essentially divisive. I reckon that if we're picking a person of the year, it ought to be someone around whom we could all unite in one way or another.

That criterion would rule out Cardinal Connell. The head of the Irish Catholic Church will always have his loyal followers, but this particular head had his fair share of critics in 2002. Especially in the wake of Prime Time revelations, it became all too clear that people had been deeply hurt by our leading prelate's insensitivity, and by his apparent determination to put institution before people. His culpability in relation to the activities and crimes of too many of his priests would surely have finished the career of a leader in any other walk of life.

By the same token, however, perhaps those who stood up to him ought to qualify as our people of the year. The courage and candour of Marie Collins and Colm O'Gorman, who faced personal pain every time they made a public statement, make them outstanding candidates. Their honesty had a profound influence on the entire nation, I believe, and will leave a lasting legacy.

But that legacy will only begin to take root when there is a new order in the Church itself, and particularly when its leadership recognises that corruption takes many forms, some of which are deeply ingrained within that institution.

Speaking of corruption, surely there is a strong case to be made for Justice Flood, whose outstandingly frank and brisk report became one of the best-sellers of the year. He surely deserves an award because despite intense pressure he held his nerve to produce clear and unequivocal findings of fact. And he meets the criterion as someone who has united us perhaps only Ray Burke, Liam Lawlor, and one or two yet-to-be-outed figures would wish not to have seen the interim report. But perhaps the very fact that the Judge's report was interim means that his time has yet to come. He will surely figure in the reckoning next year, and perhaps the year after that.

I had the great pleasure of working with Ali Hewson last year on the Shut Sellafield campaign. If it weren't for the fact that I have that vested interest, I would be nominating her for an award. The success of that campaign, entirely due to her perseverance, determination and accessibility, was such that in something like six weeks between the launch of the campaign and the closing date, the people of Ireland became sufficiently engaged to send almost one and a half million postcards to Tony Blair about the dangers still posed by Sellafield. As an exercise in raising public awareness it was a phenomenon. But it also proved that those who argue that the people of Ireland are totally disillusioned and cynical are wrong.

The second referendum on Nice made the same point. It was a dynamic debate, open and exciting, and it led not just to a decisive result but also to a higher level of participation than we have seen for a good few years. I would be tempted to offer Justin Barrett a nod as one of the people of the year, as there is no doubt that his interventions in the campaign offered many people the motivation to vote. More positive motivation however came from the energy and commitment of Garret FitzGgerald, who proved that you can be out of active politics and still have considerable influence on the nation.

And what of party politics itself? No doubt a strong case can be made for Bertie Ahern, the first Taoiseach since Jack Lynch to lead his party out of Government and straight back in again. His style of campaigning this past summer worked, his "howya" engagement with the people, although it may have been devoid of substance, nevertheless seemed to reflect what people wanted and expected of him. But I will withhold the nomination from Bertie, because it wasn't he who won the election, and it isn't he who provides the unifying figure now. It is another, to whom I will return in a moment.

The PDs certainly deserve a nod. Michael McDowell, who will never qualify as anyone's idea of a unifier, nevertheless provided the tactical master stroke of the election campaign, by relentlessly attacking the party he had served in Government with, in order that he could serve with them again. In the process, he proved that office is more important than principle to FF and to McDowell himself.

Others deserve honourable mention too Ruairi Quinn and Michael Noonan both had years they would prefer to forget, but dealt with their situations with dignity. Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte inherited the mantle of leadership, and have (shall we say) interesting futures to look forward to. David Trimble survived, just, and continued to irritate us, and Gerry Adams and Trevor Sargent took their respective parties to new heights of influence, at least temporarily.

But there was one politician this year whose achievements and whose influence eclipsed all the others. Brazenly, shamelessy, and with his eyes wide open, he bought the general election for his party. He did it by allowing the gap between revenue and spending to rise in the most irresponsible fashion. And immediately the election was over, he set about the process of trying to buy the next one, by cutting public spending on essential social services in a manner that will cause intolerable hardship in our community. He is hell-bent on building up a war chest for the next election, and he is calculating that in five years' time, if the Government lasts that long, people will have forgotten the politically expedient pain and suffering of its first two years.

The brass neck behind this approach might win out in the end right now though, he has achieved the unlikely feat of uniting the whole people of Ireland in condemnation of his policies. Because of his unifying effect, and because of the depth and spread of his influence, malign as I believe it is, I have no hesitation whatever in proposing as our Person of the Year the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy TD.

And may all the rest of us have a peaceful and happy New Year.