Politicians clamour to take credit for Ireland’s economic success

I AM not sure whether Alan Dukes was in a self-pitying or a self-mocking mood when he addressed the Tallaght Chamber of Commerce last week. I suspect it was the latter.

The former Fine Gael leader is reported to have told the audience that he feels like an artist whose work has not been recognised in his own lifetime.

In 1987 Dukes had been leader of the opposition for just a couple of months when he was invited to address the Tallaght Chamber of Commerce. He used the speech to say that as long as the recently elected minority government of Charles Haughey followed a responsible economic policy, Fine Gael would not oppose it. Dukes said that if the Government was going in the right direction economically, he did not believe it should be derailed from its course or tripped up on macro-economic issues. The speech became known as the Tallaght Strategy.