Olivia O’Leary: Paschal Donohoe was the centre holding. Will it hold without him?
You don’t survive in a constituency like Dublin Central unless you are a gritty politician, as I discovered following Paschal Donohoe around during one rainy election canvass. He was on his own and his coat was soaking. Undeterred, he stood at doorsteps bareheaded and talked to constituents. “At least you turn up,” said one grumpy man. “You’re the only one around here who turns up.” Rule number one in politics: you’ve got to get elected.
Rule number two in politics: you’ve got to get re-elected.
Donohoe knew that the only way Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could survive the threat from Sinn Féin and stay in government was to join forces. In one of the budgets he delivered as Minister for Finance during the period of Fianna Fáil support for a minority Fine Gael Government, he said – taking liberties with Yeats – the centre could hold. When his opposite number on the Fianna Fáil benches, Michael McGrath, used almost the same phrase, you knew the scripts had been aligned and it was only a matter of a short time before they would into go into government together.
Though he talked tough, he will be criticised for letting spending overrun as Minister for Finance. But once again, he was holding the centre. To hold a coalition together and accommodate the more centre-left leanings of Fianna Fáil required a looser hand on the reins than would be traditional for a Fine Gael finance minister.
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Paschal Donohoe was the centre holding. Will it hold without him?
Olivia O’Leary is a writer and broadcaster
Gerard Howlin: A man of ideas but a minister for the status quo
No Irish politician has failed better than Donohoe. He was the ultimate big spender who masqueraded as Prudent Paschal. A man of many words, his interest in books demonstrates an intellectual curiosity. But still he chose to rise out of the localism of Irish politics by appeasing vested interests.
He spent a long time prodigiously shoring up an ever-diminishing political project – long enough for him to make it to the lifeboat. Political necessity was his primary criteria for public spending.
The legacy of his long tenure as an economic minister is neither the money spent nor the lack of value delivered for it. Instead, it is that words no longer mean what they say. The credibility of a political centre which he colonised to great effect is hollowed out because of him.
[ What is the €410,000 a year job at the World Bank that Donohoe is moving to?Opens in new window ]
More profoundly, there is a chasm between what Donohoe said and what he did. Talk of holding the centre was undermined by the politics of appealing to those who have property. This was to the cost of those who must rent indefinitely. His genuine curiosity never extended to widening the tax base or rebalancing the burden to favour younger taxpayers.
He is a man of ideas, but a minister for the status quo. Deferential for too long to a public service that doted on him, he never contemplated its reform. It is not an accident that the Government he is leaving sees delivery as its primary political challenge for its survival.
Donohoe cultivated the dependence of three Fine Gael leaders on himself, but he never stepped into the leadership arena. Instead, he is the most successful Fine Gael politician since Enda Kenny and he has rowed his boat ashore. A charming but wily man, his words have not matched his deeds.
Gerard Howlin is a public affairs consultant who was a Fianna Fáil adviser from 1995 to 2007. He does not advise any political parties.
Stephen Collins: Criticised both for overspending and being too austere, he steered the economy through crises
Donohoe played a pivotal role in the evolution of Ireland from a country that needed an international bailout in 2010 into the fastest growing EU economy with a booming jobs market and rising living standards.
He guided the economy through a succession of crises – any one of which could have dragged the country back to the bad old days of endemic unemployment and unsustainable borrowing.
Having had to deal with the potentially devastating consequences of Brexit during his first term as Minister for Finance, he then had to contend with the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by the cost-of-living crisis, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered ballooning energy costs.
[ In pictures: Paschal Donohoe through the yearsOpens in new window ]
Ireland is not facing the budgetary difficulties currently bedevilling the UK and France, and Donohoe is a key reason for this. He managed to steer a careful course between restraint and the need to let public spending rise to ensure the population was protected from the worst impacts of Covid and the cost-of-living crisis.
He was criticised by some of his Fine Gael party colleagues for not allowing spending to rise even faster in advance of the 2020 and 2024 general elections. He faced criticism from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and some commentators for not being more austere.
The fact that he was elected president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers on three occasions – and has now been appointed to a prestigious role in international finance – illustrates how his prudent stewardship of the Irish economy is seen by outsiders.
His understanding of the economy has been matched by political skills that were vital for the smooth running of the governments in which he served. His ability to win and hold a seat for Fine Gael in Dublin Central was indicative of the deep respect in which he is held by the public.
Stephen Collins is an Irish Times columnist and former political editor of The Irish Times
