Gilmore, Rabbitte and Quinn built strong track records of success

IT was GK Chesterton who said about the Irish that "the great Gaels of Ireland, Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad". I don’t know about the wars, but the mournfulness of the songs is the reason I’ve never been a huge fan of Irish traditional music, if the truth be told.

Until last week. My missus and I, among hundreds of others, had the rare privilege of watching and listening to the Clare Memory Orchestra in a cave. They made astonishing music. Composed by their founder Dave Flynn, their long piece ‘Music for the Departed’ was simply unforgettable. Haunting (and yes, mournful in places), vibrant, and elemental towards the end. I’ve never seen musicians work together so brilliantly together and with such intensity. Their “artists in association” Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill are simply world-class. If you ever get a chance to see them together, pay any price you can afford!

I mentioned the cave. Not so much a cave, actually, but half way down the passage that leads into the electricity generating station under Turlough Hill in the Wicklow mountains. I don’t suppose it was ever envisaged as a concert venue, although it has wonderful acoustics, and a cathedral-like atmosphere when it’s lit for a concert.

Turlough Hill is one of the most remarkable feats of engineering in Irish history. Along with the equally impressive Ardnacrusha Dam, it represents the primary source of hydro-electric power in the country. Built at a time when environmental considerations were considered secondary to the needs of economic development, it’s one of the cleanest, greenest power stations in the world.

It’s owned and operated, of course, by the ESB. As I was admiring the place, and learning about its history, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that we’re very lucky in Ireland to have a State-owned asset like the ESB. It has made an enormous contribution to Ireland’s development in its history. I would guess that if it were possible to quantify these things in monetary terms, there is no other agency in our history that has made a bigger one.

The ESB has always been an innovator. Only this last week it has announced a partnership with Vodafone that has the potential to utterly transform our access to high speed broadband. Under the deal Ireland will become the first country in Europe to use the electricity infrastructure, which reaches into every home in the country, to carry fibre-based broadband with speeds that were unimaginable a few years ago.

That deal was brokered in part by Pat Rabbitte as Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. It’s a brilliant bringing together of the three parts of the portfolio.

We own this company. It’s a priceless national asset. But I’m convinced that if Pat Rabbitte hadn’t been minister throughout the three years of the bailout a serious effort would have been made to find out what the ESB is worth, by the simple expedient of putting it on the market.

Sometimes ministers deserve to be remembered just as much for what they prevented as for what they caused. In ensuring that the ESB in its essence has remained in public ownership, Pat Rabbitte has done Ireland a very considerable service. For which, of course, he’ll never be thanked. Because it’s one of the rules of politics that if you fight the good fight behind the scenes, no-one will ever notice.

If as seems likely (although I hope not) the imperative for change means that Pat Rabbitte won’t be a minister in a few days time, I suspect his reputation will grow into the future. The same will be true of others.

Eamon Gilmore, for instance, can always claim the title of most successful Labour leader ever in electoral terms. It does seem to be the lot of Labour leaders that they live their lives on an electoral roller coaster, but no-one ever achieved more for his party than he did.

But actually more than that — and this is one of the other examples of work behind the scenes that tends to be unfairly forgotten. When Gilmore became minister for foreign affairs, Ireland’s international reputation was in tatters. Worse, many of the alliances that had been carefully built over years had been allowed to fall into terrible disrepair. We had spent far too long gloating about Ireland’s economic miracle, as we saw it — inviting countries to come and see how we had built an engine of economic growth that was guaranteed to last as long as the Third Reich.

Gilmore painstakingly and carefully re-built those alliances, working with Ireland’s diplomats to ensure that we got more support when we needed it. He was admired throughout the key institutions for his honesty and forthrightness, and for his command of detail. In the end, it may not have done him or his party any good, but he too can claim with considerable justification than Ireland has been well-served by having him there in a time of crisis.

Ditto Ruairi Quinn. Like his colleagues, he was unlucky to have been put back into government at a time of austerity and retrenchment. But his reputation as the best finance minister Ireland has had in the last 40 to 50 years is surely unquestioned. I think it can be honestly argued that if Ruairi Quinn had been able to stay in that job after the 1997 election, the economy would have grown steadily and productively, without the madder elements of property speculation and unregulated banking.

I know there will be some readers who will simply regard it as special pleading. It’s not — at least I don’t mean it that way. Politics, if I may coin a phrase, is a cruel trade. Success always needs to be savoured, because failure is always just around the corner. Politics is just politics. There’s never any point in bleating about injustice. In politics you hand out lumps sometimes, and you have to learn to take them.

But the best politicians, whatever their other foibles or failings, are always in it out of a desire to serve and to make change. Gilmore, Quinn and Rabbitte fit into that category. Each one of them could have made a comfortable and successful career in the private sector, but chose a more difficult career path instead. They served and contributed much.

There have been examples — too many examples — of public figures in Ireland who sailed through rewarding and seemingly successful political careers, only to be found out in the end, and usually when it was too late. Whatever Ruairi Quinn, Eamon Gilmore and Pat Rabbitte choose to do next in their lives, they can reflect that they leave office without a stain on their characters, and with a significant track record of achievement.

Because of the nature of politics and the way it’s reported, not all that achievement is visible yet. But their successors , whoever they may be, have high standards to meet, and pretty big shoes to fill.