The rise and temporary fall of John Bruton

Before Christmas, some of the gay blades in Dail Eireann hit on a new game to while away the long hours of parliamentary ennui. Careful personality study, they deciided, could reveal all the secrets of a TD's childhood. There was a unanimous verdict on Fine Gael's Gay Mitchell - a fretful child, may be even a bedwetter, guaranteed to get violently sick on major outings. They were just as sure about John Bruton - a happy secure little boy, earnest and unselfconscious, arranging his toy world with the same unquestioning certainty that he would later bring to bear on government. A child like that, they decided, would never be long disheartened by setbacks. A child like that would know that it was his natural right, as well as his social responsibility to wield power. A child like that would have the serenity which attracts friends, and the unconscious arrogance which invites a sharp kick in the pants. by Olivia O'Leary

To chart the rise and temporary fall of John Bruton in Garret FitzGerald's Fine Gael one has to make clear the - the nature of his rise and the security both of temperament, and of his own position in the party, which will make temporary his fall. Despite his age, 36, Bruton has been a TD for exactly the same period as has his leader. They were both elected in 1969. While he was a somewhat raw junior minister in the coalition government of the 1970s, his performance as agriculture spokesman in opposition was competent enough to make his appointment as Finance Minister less than a total surprise. He's not a conspirator by nature, and rather than harbour grudges, he busies himmself with favourite projects. Somewhere behind that duckklike figure, tail up, head forward and arms overflowing with a mass of interesting papers, is the secure small boy who is sure of his worth and his welcome.

Bruton loved those short eight months as Finance Minister. The government was living dangerously on indeependent votes. There was a clear target - emergency cutting of the budget deficit and borrowing level - and Labour Ministers in cabinet as ready as Fine Gael to do the job - perfect teamwork from Fine Gael's point of view. As the election hysteria mounted on the night of January 27 1982, John Bruton stood with his wife outside the Dail Chamber where his budget had just been defeated. He was silent and white with fatigue but he wasn't unhappy. The government had produced its tough medicine and gone out with a bang. Bruton preferred glorious defeats to squalid victories.

There were many people in the party, however, who didn't gallop so happily into the jaws of death. Tired backkbenchers facing into a most unwelcome election asked how anyone with a political head on his shoulders would have insisted on taxing children's shoes. The Labour Party found no great comfort in defending a budget too cruel for the socialist sensitivities of Jim Kemmy. Switching hurriedly from the cabinet table to the more sensitive calculations taking place in election campaign headquarters, Garret FitzGerald discovered he didn't have to tax children's shoes after all. What had been for John Bruton a matter of principle, had become a mere matter of presentation.

John Bruton suffered from the episode; more perhaps than he deserved. He gained a reputation for obduracy and insensitivity to popular feeling. His real sin, like that of previous coalition Finance Minister, Richie Ryan, was that while putting forward proposals with which Garret FitzGerald agreed, he fell flat on his face. Those whom Garret loves stay on their political feet.

What John Bruton and Richie Ryan had in common, as well as an unfortunate capacity to draw personal fire for party decisions was their tendency to fight their corners vigorously, even against FitzGerald, and their maintenance of a broadly Christian Democrat position under a social democrat leader.

All these factors militated against Bruton's return as Finance Minister. During the delicate coalition negotiations with a very much truculent Labour Party, stung by Michael O'Leary's defection to Fine Gael and determined to show new mettle under a new leader, it was Alan Dukes and not Bruton who gained the inside track with Garret FitzGerald. Told of the rumours that he was to be usurped by Dukes, Burton was frankly incredulous.

When it happened, he bore it well, finding plenty to busy himself in Industry and Energy and accepting with good grace the extra trinkets thrown his way by an embarrrassed FitzGerald - his duties as Leader of the House in charge of Dail Reform.

But he still continued, happily, to give the nation the benefit of his thinking on long-term economic planning. As one bewildered civil servant commented: "The only thing wrong with the Minister for Industry and Energy is rhar he still thinks he's Minister for Finance,"

For Bruton, this has been a much more trying coalition. FOT 2 start, it became obvious early on that Frank Cuskey didn't like him, This must have made him feel a bit like Jack in the Giant's garden. When Cluskey smells the blood of a Oongowes boy there's no easy way down the beaasralk. And having a much more secure childhood than poor Jack, John Bruton wasn't in the habit of slinking off down beanstalks.

A clash was inevitable and there were several. Even if the two men had been personally more compatible, they were bound to disagree, being about as far apart politically as the range of political positions in the cabinet would allow. Cluskey's ideological graffiti were as distasteful to John Bruton as were Bruton's gentleman farmer attitudes to Cluskey.

Frank Cluskey was uncomfortable in government and the gas deal offered him as good an opportunity to resign as he was likely to get. The Labour Party, as well as indeependent consultants, pointed out that it was a bad deal for the state on two fronts: while gas company shareholders put up nothing, the state was investing a lot of money in a shaky company which would be in direct competition with another state company, the ESB; the state, for all its direct grant, loan guarantees, and price subsidies, was getting a decidedly small slice of the action.

While other Labour Party members would have argued for improved terms for the state, Cluskey argued for outtright nationalisation. This brought its Pavlovian response from Bruton whose distaste for "ideological" politics dates back even to his early Young Tiger days as a politics and economics student in UCD. His party colleagues in cabinet stood with him but Bruton bought their, and his leader's, loyalty at a price -losing the department of energy.

Cabinet splits are bad news for Fine Gael, and while there were good reasons for a reshuffle - Dick Spring needed a prestigious and less onerous department and it had always made sense to put Industry, Trade and Commmerce back together - Garret FitzGerald must have calcuulated that the reallocation would be interpreted as a demootion for Bruton.

Bruton has refused publicly to see it that way but in any case, he won't sulk. He has plenty to keep him busy in an expanded ministry, and indeed now that Cluskey's gone and Bruton no longer has to play Giantkiller the teamwork in cabinet may improve. It will never reach the cosy consensus of Michael O'Leary's day - Dick Spring isn't at all such a friendly little soul.

John Bruton has worked out his political position for himself and not surprisingly that position is one of caring conservatism. Asked about redistribution of wealth, he points out that one also has to redistribute opportunity, particularly educational opportunity.

But isn't he himself an obvious example of an exclusive education - he didn't attend a local national school but went to St Dominic's in Cabra and then to Clongowes ˜and of a family who own ... is it over a thousand acres in Co Meath? "No, no, not that much", Bruton interrupts hurriedly. 'How much then? He scratches his head and dithers and then says quietly: "300 acres. At the moment my family run it for me. It's beef and tillage."

But still a privileged position to be in? "Yes", he conncedes, "but if you make good use of your opportunities and try to put something back for the benefit of your fellow men and women ... " And is he doing that? "I hope so."

Bruton is a Fine Gael Whig, reflecting classic liberal attitudes in his emphasis on the need for freer markets, less restrictive practices in employment. Employment creation is the government's first priority, he says, and he sees the inflexibility of the Irish labour market as a barricade to employment creation, making employers less enthusiastic about taking on the burden of new workers.

"We must make it easier for people to be employed, rather than machines." High levels of tax and PRSI, high costs of electricity and posts and telecommunications to employers act as a disincentive to employ people, and it would be "desirable" he claims to see some move to ease these burdens in this year's budget.

And, he points out, Ireland is suffering from the Euroopean pattern of the labour market. In the United States, the economic upturn has provided an increase in employyment because of their more flexible work practices. "We need more flexibility and that means a preparedness to move from one job to another and it implies a greater degree of insecurity. But the balance is more work and more pay than in the highly structured system in Europe."

It's unlikely that the Labour Party and the unions are greatly sympathetic to the notion of less restrictive work practices but Bruton, with the zeal of a campaigner has been preaching his gospel in the Dail and in party and ministerial speeches. Profit sharing for workers would be their protection, he argued in a speech in TeD last Novemmber. Instead of too centralised and inflexible a wage fixing system, the wage structure should be more responsive to profit levels. Worker shares in their company and a profit related reward system would mean less redundancies, more worker commitment, more worker support for new technoology, higher quality workmanship, shared concern to achieve profit and wider ownership of capital, he says.

It's doubtful that the new Minister for Labour will share Bruton's enthusiasm for a freer market but dissent never stopped a Bruton campaign before.

Whatever about his performance in cabinet, Bruton hasn't proved himself a Giantkiller when it has come to dealing with the more immediate task within his departtments, the need to make the state bodies under his control more accountable. With his no-nonsense reputation, Bruton was expected to move in firmly to stop some of the more extravagant state projects. So far it hasn't happened. The building of the third phase of the coal-fired generating station at Moneypoint, at a time when there is substantial over-capacity of electricity, has brought sharp criticism of the ESB from economists, but as yet Bruton hasn't m/-%de it clear whether the government intends to halt the project. He would only make the following guarded comment about the ESB: "The ESB has been slow in changing its investtment programme in the way a board should have done and was inclined to rely too much on the fact that it had got an original political commitment to do what it was doing, rather than realising that it was the board's responsibility, not the government's, to make the right decisions about investment in energy."

As leader of the house, he is determined, he says, to push for the broadcasting of the Dail in the first half of this year. He has had mixed success in his Dail reforms. The Dail committees, despite complaints about inadequate financing and staff, are now beginning to operate. But his boast that the Dati would have plenty of time to discuss the 1984 estimates was an empty one - the estimates were published only just in time for the adjournment debate.

Bruton describes politics as a profession and his attempts <0 make parliamentary procedures more relevant was an attempt to make politics more professional. Those who have worked with him, however, suggest that he is a born secretary of a department, rather than a minister. He reads his brief assiduously, he presents a case well and argues it energetically. But when it comes to making tough decisions, the sort any businessman needs to take every day, he's much less ruthless than his reputation would suggest.

His strength within the party is his independence of any particular Fine Gael faction. He is not Garret's man, and probably in his views represents the broader spread of the party than does the FitzGerald social democrat faction. He's been careful not to get embroiled in controversial social issues. He refused to state his position during the amendment campaign and when asked if it could be assuumed that he took the same line as FitzGerald, he snapped:

"You can assume nothing."

He has always stressed that reconciliation between the two communities and between North and South must be the first aim of any Irish government. He has said he "doesn't like to beat the drum" on Irish unity and has left it to FitzGerald to climb to the more exotic heights of the new Republicanism.

Fine Gael is his natural home, and he will probably some day be its natural leader. A child of the party, he's been learning to build those bricks for long enough now. They won't be toppled easily.