WIP

 

John Bruton has had a long life in Irish politics. A qualified barrister, Bruton has had a very successful career in roles of leadership. He first served as a young TD for Fine Gael, to Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism, Minister for Finance and then as Taoiseach. He is currently EU Ambassador to the US and is based in Washington DC.

 

I was campaigning to be elected to the Dail. I was elected to the Dail a month after I was 22. I was very young; I was the youngest member of the Dail at the time.

 

A good deal of good luck. I was persistent, I think you have to persist in pursuing whatever goals you set yourself. I never set myself long-term goals, you know, “I want to be Taoiseach some day” or anything like that, not at least until I was close to the point where it was a possibility. I always wanted to move one step beyond were I was in the political world and concentrated on that. But it’s very important as well in politics to keep the balance between political politics and the grassroots and looking after your constituents. You have to do both. That must have been difficult? They’re different, but they’re complementary. I learned a lot from my constituents, the problems that people have in their daily lives because everybody’s life is different and you don’t know how other people live until you sit down with them to help them solve a problem.

 

I think probably my Father, he was very influential in some ways. He was well known in farming circles in Meath and nationally at the time that I was interested in running for the Dail. I think if my Father wasn’t known, it would’ve been difficult to get elected as young as I was. Obviously I contributed to it, but I think that was a help. Also, I think his attitude to people was one of always believing the best in people, not being suspicious of other people and believing the best and bringing out the best as well. I think that attitude has served me well.

I value success, but at the end of the day I’m like everybody else. I suppose with most people what’s important to you is having a stable and happy family. Nothing else is very satisfactory unless you have that. That requires work as much as a career requires work! You have to strike a balance.

Oh I think it can be learned. I don’t have much faith in the idea that people are born to be leaders. I think it’s something that you learn. Leadership isn’t just about bossing people, it’s about persuading people. It’s about having the confidence to make decisions, of course, but it’s also listening to people so that when you ask them to do something, there’s a reasonable possibility that they might do it! I think it’s a combination of the skills that you learn. But it’s not something you’re born with, it’s a decision you make.

They were both very enjoyable jobs. Being Taoiseach was more stressful, but not as stressful as you might think insofar as I had a good team of people working with me. Also, you went from problem to problem, so you didn’t have much time be worrying about what you did yesterday because you’ve so many decisions to make today and the day after and the day after that. It just kept going in a sort of state of suspension where you were sort of suspended three feet above the ground moving forward all the time. You didn’t have time to sit back and worry about things.

 

In legal terms, we’ll still be in the EU and there isn’t much that we could be threatened with. But I think two things; one, the European Union itself would lose momentum dramatically and that would be very bad for Ireland because Ireland is a small country and a small country needs the union to be part of, rather than having big countries make all the decisions. As far as Ireland is concerned itself, I think it would be a very major blow to the political leadership of the country that the people have elected. Not just the government, but the opposition parties as well. It isn’t good for a country to have the people wanting to go one way and the leadership wanting to go the other. It would have quite a damaging effect on confidence internally. And confidence is trust and if you don’t have trust between the politicians and the people, then you’re going nowhere. I think it would have quite a dispiriting effect. Certainly it would lead to an awful lot of anger at Ireland, but in many ways there’s not a lot that directly that other European countries could do about that, but you just don’t know, you really don’t know. You know the old saying “what goes around, comes around” and countries could find some other way of ‘getting back’. I think, possibly, some of the European countries could try to go ahead on their own, either using the existing treaty or negotiating a new treaty to go ahead on their own. Some of the other countries like Britain might just decide they’re not going to go with that. So we wouldn’t be completely on our own, but we’d be putting ourselves back in a position where we’d be dependent on Britain. It would almost be a reversal, going back 200 years in Irish history. The whole trend of Irish activity is not to be on bad terms with Britain, but not to depend on them.

 

I hope I’m speaking to one now, I could recommend a political party too! I can only advise on the basis of my own life. I think it’s very important, particularly for a young person, who is academically well-qualified, as you are, not to get too infatuated with the theory of politics or the theatre of politics that you see in student politics, for example. But to recognise that the great bulk of the electorate are not interested in that, they’re more interested in getting their street paved or getting local problems and personal problems solved. One needs, when going into politics, to be prepared to devote oneself to that, but to read as well; to read widely, to make time to read. There’s too many politicians in Ireland who only do the grassroots work and don’t do the reading, that’s no good. While equally, only reading and not doing the grassroots work is no good either. So you’ve got to make time for both to be able to advance in politics.

 

I think the big challenge Ireland is going to face, as will all the European countries, is the aging of our society. The increasing number of people getting past working age, the cost that will impose on society, the lack of young people, and our birth rate has been falling steadily since 1980. We had a fantastic time in the 1990s because in Ireland we had a disproportionately large number of people were young and working age who had relatively few children to support and fewer older people to support. But going forward into the future, we’re probably not going to have that many more children, but increasing numbers of older people. And older people are wonderful in many ways, but they’re not productive economically. So that’s going to be a challenge, finding a way of persuading people not to retire, finding ways of helping older people to be productive. Ensuring that young people don’t resent that some older people need to be supported. I think that demographic will probably be the biggest challenge. But we’re not alone in this. Ireland’s case is not the worst it’s one of the less bad cases in Europe. But it’s a pretty serious thing.

 

The financial crisis that we’re going through at the moment is very bad. Though I sort of have a sense that we’ll get through it. We may have to do things that we haven’t done since the early 1930s, like cut pay and cut pensions and cut social welfare. But those things may have to be done. It’s very very dangerous and difficult politically to contemplate. But I think we won’t have to do it for long and we won’t have to do too much of it, we may have to do a little just to get us through.

You have to flexible about what you’re going to do initially, because you’re not necessarily going to get the job of your dreams. But keep your eye on your goal and try and use whatever opportunities you get. The truth of it is most people can do several jobs, I don’t think there’s any one job that people can only do. So you have to be a bit open-minded about it. Skills required in one area can be useful in another.