‘I thought Jack Lynch was terrific’
IT’S a somewhat surprising admission from a staunch Fine Gael supporter, but maybe not from someone who described himself as a “tribal Corkman” in an RTÉ programme earlier this year.
“I thought Jack Lynch was terrific,” says Bill O’Herlihy.
“I voted for Lynch in Cork, believe it or not, when Cork City was one constituency — I thought Lynch was great.”
That was in the days before O’Herlihy moved to Dublin to work for RTÉ and later built a second career as a PR expert who advised, among others, Garret FitzGerald as taoiseach and Enda Kenny during his first stint as a minister.
Although best known as the face of RTÉ’s soccer coverage, O’Herlihy has had a long-running and fascinating involvement in politics. It seems odd, then, that he was never publicly touted as a potential political candidate. In fact, he says, he got a couple of tentative approaches, neither of which he took seriously despite his high regard for the people making them.
The second approach, as detailed in this newspaper today, was from Joan FitzGerald, wife of Garret, about the 1990 presidency. The first had been from Lynch in the early 70s.
To those who know the broadcaster, this might seem strange for a couple of reasons. One is, of course, his political heritage: His grandfather, John Horgan, was a National League TD, proceeded to Cumann na nGaedheal and on to Fine Gael.
“He was a lord mayor of Cork as well, and he would not sit on the same platform when he was lord mayor as de Valera, because he blamed de Valera for the civil war.”
The second reason was that O’Herlihy’s career in current affairs at RTÉ famously came crashing to a halt because of the actions of Lynch’s Fianna Fáil government.
In 1969, O’Herlihy carried out a groundbreaking investigation on moneylending for RTÉ’s current affairs programme 7 Days — only for Lynch’s government to launch a tribunal into RTÉ rather than the moneylenders, claiming the prog-ramme was a work of exaggeration.
“It was a witch-hunt against RTÉ,” says O’Herlihy, explaining that 7 Days had been too forensic in its coverage of current affairs for the then government’s liking.
“Fianna Fáil saw RTÉ as a propaganda arm; they didn’t see it as an organisation that could be objective.”
As for himself, he was just the collateral damage, he says.
“I was a little trout in a piranha pool. I was of no consequence. The person they were going after was Muiris Mac Conghail [then editor of 7 Days].”
It would be 1970 before the tribunal reported, essentially finding in favour of the government’s accusations and against RTÉ. O’Herlihy moved to sport, but in the intervening period had managed to secure an interview with Lynch — through Cork contacts — after the eruption of the arms crisis earlier that year. Lynch and O’Herlihy got on, and some time after, in the early ’70s, the Fianna Fáil leader came calling through an intermediary.
“Ironically in view of the fact that I was consistently Fine Gael in my thinking, I got a nibble — I wouldn’t go any further than that now because it would be putting it too strongly — from a Jack Lynch contact, wondering if I’d be interested in running for Fianna Fáil in Cork.
“And I said no. There were two reasons for that: First of all, in terms of heritage, I couldn’t have done it, but more importantly, I was then living in Dublin and I thought the idea of somebody coming down from Dublin to run in Cork would be a disaster — that I’d get more Christmas cards than votes.”
Instead, he set up his own PR firm, O’Herlihy Communications, in 1973, and after a former RTÉ boss whom he admired, Ted Nealon, became head of government information services in 1975, eventually became involved with Fine Gael in an advisory capacity from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s — the heyday of Garret FitzGerald.
O’Herlihy was one of the advisers dubbed “the national handlers” who helped professionalise political communications in Ireland. In a 1982 Magill report on FitzGerald’s return to power with a record 70 Fine Gael seats, Vincent Browne dubbed this team of advisers “the best Irish politics has seen in recent times”.
O’Herlihy was in charge of television and radio, including party political broadcasts, and Browne credited him with devising the famous dig at Fianna Fáil (or more specifically, at Charles Haughey), which ran: “You can’t have one without the other.”
All these years later, O’Herlihy says he cannot recall if he scripted it or not. “Maybe I did, I can’t honestly remember. If you want to give me the credit for it, I’ll take it but I’m not entirely sure.”
However, he does recall with pride what the team achieved.
“To be part of that was to be part of something that was hugely important, and also groundbreaking, because elections were never the same again — Fine Gael put in place things that Fianna Fáil did even better again subsequently.”
Fine Gael in government was a “hugely exciting period”, as FitzGerald sought to implement the “just society” envisioned by Declan Costello.
However, it was Peter Barry with whom O’Herlihy says he worked most closely, and the party erred, he feels, when FitzGerald stepped down in 1987 and a new leader chosen.
“We would have won a general election with Peter Barry. Dukes got it too early. I can only assume that Barry wasn’t considered as intellectual as the others, because there’s no other explanation, and the bottom line is he had far more political nous. He was the lost leader, definitely, in my estimation.”
O’Herlihy sees echoes of FitzGerald, meanwhile, in Enda Kenny, whom he classes as a friend and offers the occasional thought or two but doesn’t advise in a formal capacity. He feels Kenny is suffering a little bit right now from the lack of a stronger communications policy — that his government is actually achieving but that this message is not getting across.
“I think that a lot of people have lost sight of the fact that the Government are actually on target in many respects,” he says. “The attitude to Ireland has changed spectacularly over the past 12 months.
“But I think there’s a kind of fuzziness about Government communications. I think it should be stronger.”
As an example, he thinks Kenny’s state of the nation address in December should become a monthly exercise until the worst of the crisis has passed, with updates as to which objectives have been accomplished and which ones are still works in progress.
However, he has no doubt Kenny will ultimately prove a successful leader and will turn the economy around, overcoming interim controversies such as the failure to burn senior bondholders.
“He reminds me very much of FitzGerald. Remember when Mrs Thatcher gave her ‘out, out, out’ speech [on Northern Ireland in 1984]? But a year later, FitzGerald delivered the Anglo Irish Agreement, and I think Kenny will deliver in due course along the same lines [on the economy].”
O’Herlihy served as an outside adviser to Kenny when he was tourism minister in the 1994-97 rainbow coalition and believes he was underestimated then and now.
However, if Kenny is underestimated, O’Herlihy believes another man he advised — Michael Lowry — got something of a raw deal.
O’Herlihy also worked as an outside adviser to Lowry in that coalition, until the then Fine Gael TD got sacked as communications minister.
Even the most rabidly partisan Fine Gael supporters would hesitate before saying something in Lowry’s defence these days, but O’Herlihy says he was a “big fan” of Lowry and in his dealings with him — “and I can only talk about my dealings with him — I never saw any sign of corruption”.
On the Moriarty Tribunal finding that Lowry helped steer the second mobile phone licence Denis O’Brien’s way, O’Herlihy says: “I remember talking to Lowry about whether or not he would have an influence on the decision. And he said there was no question of his involvement on the grounds that it would ultimately go to Brussels and if there was any sign of interference, he would be sacked… In subsequent conversations with officials, I was told that the winning submission was the best without question. And I remember a few times he was asked to do things by constituents that he felt would affect his integrity, and he refused to do them.”
As for the fact that Ben Dunne paid for an extension to Lowry’s house?
“Dunnes — that’s a different thing. He said to me once: ‘It’s very easy to criticise, but if you’re a sole trader, if everything, including the jobs of more than 50 people, depends on your master as it were, and your master determines this is how you’re going to be paid…’”
O’Herlihy, it seems, stands by his friends. Or perhaps like on RTÉ’s soccer coverage, he’s not afraid of occasionally stirring things to provoke a debate.
And considering Fine Gael’s current dominance of the political scene, and the fact that Fianna Fáil look like a beaten docket, he has one other opinion which might raise a few eyebrows at the next Fine Gael get-together.
“Fine Gael and Labour have worked extremely well together over the years in a number of administrations and are doing so currently. But there’s something to be said for the development of a proper left-right politics,” he says.
“I would love to see a situation where Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil got together. I’m not sure either party would be the slightest bit interested. It would be anathema to many. But having said all that, I think they’re natural allies in many ways, because their politics, if not their behaviour, are very similar… and then left-right politics would develop in a much more realistic way in this country.”
Now Eamon, what d’ya make of that?
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
