He and his colleagues were also deeply resentful about Labour's pose as the moral mudguard of the coalition. This was the context in which Reynolds ignored a cabinet decision that the forthcoming report of the Beef Tribunal would be studied before the government issued its collective response. Instead, fearing that Labour would use the report to undermine him, Reynolds had the report scrutinized by his own advisers and then issued a statement that the report had vindicated his role in the affair. Spring was furious at having been ignored – the Taoiseach refused to accept his phone calls while the report was being studied – and his supporters claim he remained in government only because of the delicate state of the peace process in Northern Ireland.138
It was in the area of Northern Ireland policy that the Reynolds–Spring coalition registered its major success. Reynolds had inherited the ongoing contacts that Haughey had initiated with Sinn Féin but was able to develop these within the context of a new engagement with John Major, the British Prime Minister. Taking up John Hume's idea that a joint declaration by London and Dublin on the basic principles of a settlement could create the conditions for an IRA ceasefire, he displayed a ruthless pragmatism and a willingness to accommodate the constitutional concerns of Ulster Unionists. The result was the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, with its subtle combination of ‘green’ language and democratic content. Further inducements were proffered to republicans, including an end to their banishment from the airwaves in the Republic and an Irish version of a proposed Anglo-Irish Framework document that provided a ‘dynamic’ set of North–South institutions that republicans could envisage as ‘transitional’ to a united Ireland. Reynolds persuaded President Clinton to allow a visa to Gerry Adams for a visit to the US. In return, Reynolds made it clear that the only response he would be satisfied with was a permanent end to violence; the alternative was a deal with Major, the Unionists and the SDLP, which would leave republicans isolated.139 The IRA's announcement of a ‘complete cessation of military operations’ on 31 August 1994 was to a large extent Reynolds's achievement: his blunt businessman's approach with its lack of ideological baggage on the North, and above all his willingness to take major risks, had paid off.
This success was double-edged, for it was very much the Taoiseach's, and Spring, despite his role as Foreign Minister and a history of Anglo-Irish involvement going back to 1982, was marginalized. In fact, it is doubtful whether Spring's background and his political base in ‘republican’ Kerry would have allowed him to deal as robustly with Sinn Féin as Reynolds had done. Meanwhile, radical deterioration in relations between the coalition partners had occurred over Reynolds's treatment of the Beef Tribunal report. A terminal blow was struck in November 1994, when Reynolds insisted on appointing Attorney-General Harry Whelehan as President of the High Court. Spring had opposed Whelehan, who was a conservative with no judicial experience, and when it transpired that the Attorney-General's office had been responsible for a delay in the processing of an extradition warrant for a paedophile priest and that a similar case had occurred in 1993, the Labour ministers resigned from the government and Reynolds stepped down as leader of Fianna Fáil, to be replaced by Bertie Ahern.
Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left, whose Dáil strength had increased to six TDs after two by-election victories, were able to form a ‘rainbow coalition’ in December 1994, with John Bruton as Taoiseach. Labour retained six cabinet seats while the Democratic Left leader, Proinsias de Rossa, became Minister for Social Welfare and three of the party's TDs were appointed Ministers of State. The three parties established a good working relationship, and there was no repeat of the divisions that had been a feature of the previous administration. Tensions did exist between Spring and de Rossa on Northern Ireland because of the latter's hostility to Sinn Féin and his sympathy for mainstream Ulster Unionism. This was particularly so after the coalition's greatest setback: the ending of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996. Republicans blamed Major for allegedly using the question of IRA weapons as an obstacle to ‘conflict resolution’ and, supported by Albert Reynolds, they criticized Bruton and de Rossa for being accomplices in ‘British intransigence’. Spring's most influential adviser, Fergus Finlay, publicly established clear green water between Spring and his government partners by declaring that talks without Sinn Féin were ‘not worth a penny candle’.140
One of the most notable effects of the peace process after 1992 was the increasing ‘Ulsterization’ of politics in the Republic, as there was a qualitative increase in the amount of time and energy that the Republic's political class had to invest in the developing political situation in the North. Public opinion in the Republic was also affected as, for the first time since 1969, there appeared to be a real possibility of an end to violence. The effects were complex. On the one hand there was a willingness to jettison more traditional forms of irredentism and, in 1998, support what was essentially a ‘two states – one nation’ settlement. On the other there was an upsurge in uncritical support for northern nationalism, once it appeared that its violent cutting edge could be discarded. That the IRA went back to war in February 1996 was put down to John Major's indulgence of Ulster Unionist intransigence, an interpretation that was then considered vindicated by the sectarian stand-off over the Portadown Orange Order's desire to march down the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road. During the 1997 general election campaign Bertie Ahern attacked Bruton's handling of the peace process, asserting that it was the duty of the Taoiseach to act as leader of ‘Nationalist Ireland’. Sinn Féin won its first seat since 1957 when its candidate topped the poll in Cavan–Monaghan. Although its overall vote at 2.5 per cent was still small, it had overtaken Democratic Left, and good polls in Kerry and inner-city Dublin showed a substantial potential for growth. This potential was all the greater given the increasingly fragmented nature of party support in the Republic.
Fianna Fáil's performance was not impressive in terms of votes: it was only marginally up on 1992 at 39.3 per cent, although a more effective vote-management strategy brought it an extra nine seats. Fine Gael had been rescued from the doldrums by Bruton's performance in government and its share of the vote increased from 24.5 per cent to almost 30 per cent, gaining it an extra nine seats. Labour paid the price for its embrace of Reynolds, with its vote almost halved to 9 per cent and its number of seats dropping from thirty-three to seventeen. Although the Progressive Democrat vote held up at just under 5 per cent, it lost six of its ten seats. Bertie Ahern was able to construct a minority coalition government with the PDs that was dependent on the support of some of the plethora of independents who had been elected.141
Fine Gael had begun to portray itself as the leader of a social democratic alternative to a conservative Fianna Fáil–PD alliance. Bertie Ahern, who had been a trade union activist before entering full-time politics, was unlikely to accept such a right-wing designation for his party, and the strong performance of the economy made it easier to avoid the traditional tough choices between expenditure and tax cuts. His government's position was also strengthened by his role in the Northern peace process and, above all, by the Good Friday Agreement. Fianna Fáil's choice of a northern Catholic, the Queen's University law professor Mary McAleese, as its presidential candidate when Mary Robinson resigned in 1997 was the first indication of how ‘Ulsterization’ could benefit Fianna Fáil. McAleese was an example of a new breed of younger, upwardly mobile Catholics who had benefited from reformist direct rule. Self-confident in their nationalism, they regarded a non-violent republican movement as a more effective voice than the increasingly tired and middle-aged SDLP.
After the IRA cessation Sinn Féin's leaders had many fewer occasions to appear as apologists for violence and instead projected themselves as calm, reasonable, and earnest men who talked about peace. For younger voters with no direct experience of atrocities like Enniskillen, Teebane Cross or the Shankill Road bombing, Sinn Féin became an increasingly attractive anti-establishment political force. A survey of school students
carried out by the National Youth Council of Ireland in 2000 showed that it was the second most popular party after Fianna Fáil and had almost as much support as Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens put together.142
Sinn Féin, despite the IRA's bloody history and involvement in criminal activities including armed robberies and smuggling, did not hesitate to denounce the immorality of the Republic's political elite. Certainly the scale of corruption involving senior political figures, most of whom were members of Fianna Fáil, proved substantial, as evidenced by the results of the two tribunals of inquiry set up to investigate first, the finances of Charles Haughey and second, the way the physical planning process had been distorted by developers' payments to Dublin-based TDs and councillors. But its political impact was relatively muted.
Although Fianna Fáil did not win any of the five by-elections held during the new Dáil, it did reasonably well in the local and European elections held in 1999, and there was little evidence of a revival of the main opposition parties. Labour under a new leader, Ruairi Quinn, had merged in 1998 with Democratic Left. The new organization faced a challenge in the most deprived working-class neighbourhoods from Sinn Féin, which imported the potent mixture of populist nationalism and vigilante justice for local drug dealers and petty criminals it had perfected in the North. Fine Gael, which had fought the 1997 election on left-of-centre commitments to a more equitable tax system and the need for radical improvements in public services, did not sustain this dynamic in opposition. As its support in opinion polls slumped,143 a sizeable section of the party in the Dáil blamed John Bruton's leadership style, stiff and didactic, and his alleged pro-Unionist bias on the North. However, his successor, Michael Noonan, more populist and more nationalist, did not produce any improvement in the party's poll ratings.
Despite his former political association with Haughey and the embarrassment caused by the revelation that his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ray Burke, had received a £30,00 political donation from a building firm in 1989, Ahern was not damaged by the corruption issue. This must be linked to the astonishing performance of the Republic's economy. Growth rates at around 10 per cent a year were unprecedented, and unemployment fell from 10 per cent to under 4 per cent for the first time in the history of the state. The result was that, as one financial journalist put it, ‘normal rules of budgetary policy did not seem to apply, every budget brought lower taxes, higher spending and the promise of more to come.’144 The Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, was able over four budgets to make substantial cuts in direct taxation. The main beneficiary was the business community and high earners: corporation tax was cut from 36 per cent to 16 per cent and capital gains tax was halved, while probate tax was abolished. The large surpluses generated by the boom permitted substantial tax benefits to workers as well: there were substantial cuts in the standard and top rates of income tax and a widening of the standard rate band.145 Increasing private affluence, while it greatly strengthened the goverment's ability to insulate itself from the revelations of sleaze, did not prevent it from being criticized for ignoring the evidence that, while the Republic was now one of the richest countries in the EU, it was also one of the most unequal, with a crumbling infrastructure and seriously underfunded public services. Social spending fell as a share of GDP during the period 1997–2001, and, according to the United Nations Human Development Report, the Republic had the second highest level of poverty in the developed world.146
Issues of who benefited from the Celtic Tiger became more pressing when, in 2001, it appeared that the years of spectacular boom might be over. The economic downturn reflected the global slowdown in the information and communications technology sector on which Ireland was particularly dependent. Even before the events of 11 September, the Republic had been hard hit by the recession. As the IDA calculated that 6,500 multinational jobs were lost in 2001 and the economy's rate of growth slumped from 11 per cent in 2000 to 3 per cent,147 the Governor of the Central Bank declared the era of the Celtic Tiger was indeed over.148
The coalition's response was one of ambivalence. Some ministers, including McCreevy and the Tánaiste and PD leader Mary Harney, continued to articulate a strong neo-liberal response, criticizing the EU for its ‘outmoded philosophy of high taxation and heavy regulation’ and declaring that the Republic was ‘spiritually closer to Boston than Berlin’.149 Others, including the Taoiseach, rediscovered Fianna Fáil's social democratic vocation and Ahern even called himself a socialist.150 The conflicting messages contributed to the government's major defeat on the Treaty of Nice Referendum in June 2001. The Treaty was designed to make the institutional reforms to EU decision-making structures necessary for enlargement. Supported by all the main parties, the trade unions, employers, farmers’ organizations and the Irish Catholic bishops, it was nevertheless rejected by 54 per cent of the third of the electorate who bothered to vote.
The two parties that had been active in the anti-Nice campaign, the Greens and Sinn Féin, put a radical, anti-militarist gloss on the result. However, it appears that the biggest factor leading to a ‘no’ vote was what one academic labelled a ‘growing independence sentiment: the feeling that Ireland should do all that it can to protect its independence from the EU’.151 With the Republic now too rich to enjoy ‘objective one’ status and the access to structural funds that it provided and with the prospect of having to compete for EU resources with the prospective new members from the former Soviet bloc, Irish Euro-scepticism reflected insular self-interest more than some radical anti-system agenda. The darker side of Irish Euro-scepticism was also seen in increasing evidence of racism and antagonism to foreign workers and asylum seekers. However, it was also the case that the low turnout had reflected the failure of the political elite to overcome the indifference and lack of interest of a large section of the public in European affairs in general and the Nice Treaty in particular. In a rerun of the referendum in October 2002, the governing parties, and Fianna Fáil in particular, ran a much more intensive and effective campaign. The result was an increase in turnout of 15 per cent and a victory for the ‘yes’ campaign of 63 per cent to 37 per cent.152
Ahern suffered another reversal when the government held a referendum on abortion in March 2002. Hoping to tidy up the situation created by the ‘X’ case, the government proposed to remove the threat of suicide as a justification for a termination. Ahern had given a pledge to deal with the issue during the 1997 campaign and had made a post-election commitment to hold a referendum to four of the Independent TDs who supported the government. Despite the support of the Catholic Church and the main ‘pro-life’ groups, the government's amendment was narrowly defeated: 49.58 per cent to 50.42 on a turnout of 42.89 per cent. There was a clear urban–rural divide with Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick voting ‘no’ and the predominantly rural constituencies voting ‘yes’, and the turnout in urban areas was higher than that in the countryside. As one commentator noted, ‘Never before has the electorate refused to yield before the full force of Rome and the Republican Party.’153
Despite his setbacks on Nice and abortion, and despite the economic slowdown, Ahern's reputation for competence, even statesmanship, which had been gained through his role in the peace process, remained a major asset to Fianna Fáil. It helped to cement Fianna Fáil's success in the general election in May 2002. Fighting on the slogan ‘A Lot Done, More to Do’, the party portrayed itself as the only political force large enough and coherent enough to maintain prosperity in a more unstable international environment and at a time of increasing evidence that there had been a serious deterioration in the public finances during 2001.154
Fine Gael, which had alienated some of its core support with Noonan's more nationalist stance on the North, further disconcerted them with a manifesto full of spending commitments that allowed Fianna Fáil to attack it for irresponsibility. Fine Gael's incoherence and its low poll ratings led to large-scale defections by its supporters to Labour, Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, who appealed to
the electorate to deny Fianna Fail an overall majority and ensure that they could continue to act as a governmental restraint on the larger party. Labour refused Noonan's plea for a pre-election pact, but, like Fine Gael, it underestimated the electorate's preference for governmental stability over specific spending commitments. In addition, Labour's implicit commitment to a centrist coalition meant that it failed to benefit from the substantial anti-establishment vote that went to Sinn Féin, the Greens and the Independents.
The result was a triumph for Ahern and a disaster for Noonan. Fianna Fáil's vote rose by over 2 per cent to 41.7 per cent and its number of seats from seventy-seven to eighty-one. Fine Gael's vote fell by 5.5 per cent to 22.5 per cent, while its seats plummeted from fifty-four to thirty-one. In Dublin it was left with only three TDs, putting it in fifth place. Labour's vote fell by 2 per cent to 10.77 per cent, although it returned with the same number of seats: twenty-one. The Progressive Democrats, despite a small decline in their vote (0.72 per cent to 3.96), doubled their number of seats to eight. Sinn Féin's vote increased by 4 per cent to 6.5 per cent and its number of seats from one to five. The Green vote increased by 2 per cent to 3.85 and its seats from two to six. There would be a record number of Independents in the new Dáil: fifteen.155
For the first time since 1969 an outgoing government had been re-elected. The election seemed, to some commentators, to portend radical change in the Irish party system. There was much talk of a terminal crisis of Fine Gael.156 In fact, the key shift in the system had occurred over a decade before, in 1989, when Fianna Fail had given up its ‘principled’ opposition to coalition government.157 Fine Gael's future would depend on the attitude of the Labour Party towards Fianna Fáil, and here the prognosis was not so bleak. Ruairi Quinn, the Labour leader, resigned in August 2002, and his successor, elected by the new system of one-member, one-vote, was Pat Rabbitte, TD for Dublin South-west and a former junior minister in the 1994–7 Rainbow Coalition. Rabbitte had been a leading member of the Workers' Party and its successor, Democratic Left, which merged with Labour in 1999. He brought to the leadership of the party strong intellectual qualities and a reputation as perhaps the Dáil's most effective performer. He was also influenced by the Workers' Party tradition of hostility to traditional Irish nationalism, particularly that associated with Fianna Fail and Sinn Féin. Here he was in tune with the attitudes of those party members who preferred to seek coalition with Fine Gael and the Green Party, rather than with Ahern's party, and who were hostile to Sinn Féin.158
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