Phil Flynn: From pariah to insider

Phil Flynn was regarded as politically 'unhygienic' by ministers who later appointed him to State boards. By Vincent Browne

Barry Desmond, the Minister for Health in Garret FitzGerald's government from 1983 to 1987 said he would regard it as "an act of political hygiene" to refuse to deal with Phil Flynn, who was then general secretary of IMPACT, which represents public service employees.

Not long afterwards, according to Phil Flynn, Dick Spring, then Tánaiste and leader of the Labour Party, representing Kerry North in the Dáil, called Flynn to his office. Barry Desmond was there. There was a problem with the unions over the opening of the new hospital in Tralee in Spring's constituency. Barry Desmond had been unable to resolve it, Spring was now asking Flynn to do so and asking in front of Barry Desmond, the author of the "political hygiene" phrase. Flynn agreed to do so and did so. It was merely a step in the "respectabilising" of Phil Flynn, after his involvement with Sinn Féin of which he was vice President in the early 1980s.

Michael Noonan, then Minister for Justice had appealed in a television interview in 1984 to IMPACT trade union members not to elect Flynn as general secretary. Flynn believes that appeal won him the position. He was later to get to know and like Michael Noonan. He was also to become a cog in the establishment, chairing the government's decentralisation committee, becoming a member of the board of the VHI (Michael Noonan's appointment when he was Minister for Health from 1994 to 1997), chairman of the Industrial Credit Corporation (appointed by Ruairi Quinn). Mary Harney had got him to do a report on an industrial dispute at Dublin Airport a few years ago. He was seen as effective, skilled at negotiation and entirely reliable.

But when the Cork "money laundering" story broke in February 2005 he felt constrained to "step aside" from his official and commercial positions and not a single public figure spoke in his defence, although some of them had reason to know he was innocent of the innuendoes circulating about him.

He was born Dundalk in 1940. He went to the local Christian Brothers' school and to the Marist College, leaving there when aged 16. He went to London, worked on construction sites, got embroiled in trade union affairs and in the British Labour Party. He went to work for NUPI (National Union of Public Employees).

He got married and by the time he was 21 his wife had had a child, Sean. He was offered a scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford and to the London School of Economics (LSE). Because of his new family commitments he was unable to avail of these but he did do a diploma part time at LSE.

He started to write for the Irish Worker, a left/republican publication for which the likes of Gerry Lawless and Ruairi Quinn also write (Ruairi Quinn contributed material from Greece where he was then based).

When sectarian tensions became manifest in Belfast in 1966, Phil Flynn says he anticipated a conflagration and he came back to Ireland. He had joined Sinn Féin when aged 14, having lied about his age. There was no republican tradition in his family – his father was Fine Gael ("Michael Collins Fine Gael") and his mother was Fianna Fáil.

On returning to Ireland however he joined the Irish Labour Party and was adopted as a candidate for Louth. He got a job with the Irish Local Government Officials Union, which later became part of IMPACT. He stayed with Labour only a few years and then joined Sinn Féin before the Official/Provo split in late 1969. He was disillusioned by the split and distanced himself from republicanism for a few years but around 1972 he became involved with Provisional Sinn Féin, then led by Ruairi O'Brádaigh and the late Dave O'Connell. He was close personally to both of them.

He says now that as far as he is concerned the "peace process" began around 1974 and he very much favoured it. He believed then it was obvious there could be no military resolution to the conflict and, given that, only politics could resolve the conflict. Dave O'Connell was very much involved in a "peace initiative" in 1974 and 1975 but it came to nothing. Phil Flynn stayed on in Sinn Féin until 1986, becoming vice president in 1980 for two years. He left in 1986 in part because of disillusionment over the further split in the movement that occurred then – this was when Ruairi O'Brádaigh and Dave O' Connell left to form Republican Sinn Féin.

Meanwhile his trade union career. He was elected general secretary of IMPACT, the public service union, on 1984, much to the chagrin of the then Fine Gael-Labour government of which Barry Desmond was a member. He was elected to the executive of ICTU in 1986 – this time Patrick Cooney, then Minister for Defence, appealed to trade union members not to favour Flynn – and he became President of ICTU in 1994, a position he held for two years.

He was central to the negotiation of the first partnership agreement in 1987, which is credited as a key factor in the genesis of the Celtic Tiger.

As Chairman of ICC, he led the negotiations for the sale of ICC to the Bank of Scotland. "Bank of Scotland seemed to like my cheek and as a consequence, they offered me the position of chairman of Bank of Scotland Ireland."

He was appointed chairman of the Irish Credit Corporation (ICC) in 1996 and was centrally involved in the sale of ICC to the Bank of Scotland Ireland. So impressed were the Bank of Scotland people with him in the negotiations (he says it was his "cheek") that he was invited to become chairman of the company.

He was appointed chairman of the Government's decentralisation committee a few years ago and remains very committed to the idea – he had previously been appointed chairman of a devolution committee by John Bruton when he was Taoiseach and he is also very much in favour of devolution. He sees no reason why, in a country the size of Ireland, decentralisation could not work.