Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On my behalf and on behalf of my colleagues in the Seanad Independent Group, I want to be associated with all the tributes that have been paid to John Bruton in the national media and most especially in this House.

What I want to say about John Bruton can be reduced to one sentence: He was a genuine, authentic, honest and brave character. As Senator Joe O’Reilly just said, you knew exactly what he thought, and he was honest in all his opinions.

Senator Joe O’Reilly mentioned that he was in college with Finola. I was reflecting last night as I went along the corridor in my house. I have a poster on the wall for “Garret’s local team” in the 1979 local elections. Finola, Joe Doyle, Tommy Woods and I were Garret's local team. She was very active in Young Fine Gael. Garret FitzGerald encouraged people like myself - I was just five years out of college and she was still in college - to stand and get involved in politics to transform Irish politics. When you think about it, John Bruton himself was elected at the age of 22 in a by-election. He had been waiting for 12 years for his run at being a Minister for Finance and had been waiting for 22 years for the unanticipated crack at being Taoiseach.

In all that time, I cannot think of any occasion on which he said anything unkind, nasty or unpleasant in these Houses about anybody. I may have a rose-tinted view and I am sure he was a highly competitive politician. However, during all that time during which I dealt with him in various shapes and forms in Fine Gael, the Progressive Democrats, etc., I never remember him saying anything unkind or bitter about anybody else. He was an enigma in some respects because he came from what would have been seen as the conservative Christian democrat wing of Fine Gael, rather than Garret FitzGerald’s social democratic wing of Fine Gael. Yet, as Senator Joe O’Reilly said, he was able as Taoiseach to command a coalition with Proinsias De Rossa’s party as his partner in government.I remember that well because we in the Progressive Democrats thought it was our opportunity. We got ten seats in the previous election and we were entertained to a meeting with the Labour Party. Former Deputies Mervyn Taylor and Ruairí Quinn were representing then Labour leader Dick Spring, who was not going to meet us on that occasion, which was a signal in itself. I remember Ruairí Quinn smoking a large Havana cigar and dismissing us as people who were not going to be allowed into government. That Government seemed an unlikely political combination but it succeeded due to John Bruton's diplomacy. At the end of that period in government when he faced into an election, John, the conservative Christian democrat leader of Fine Gael, urged voters to give their preferences to the Democratic Left rather than the Progressive Democrats. That rankled with me at the time, I must confess, but there you are.

On Northern Ireland, he was absolutely honest in his convictions. He came from a Redmondite family. He was not in the Collins-IRB tradition of Fine Gael at all. He clung to the notion that even the 1916 Rising was unfortunate and unnecessary, a proposition with which I would not agree, but he articulated that view and had the courage to do so. Even if you profoundly disagree with him, very few people would have had the bravery to say that even if it was what they meant and that was why John Redmond's picture was in his Taoiseach's office. As Senator Joe O'Reilly said, it enabled him to extend a hand to unionists in Northern Ireland, which is still essential but was most essential then because politics in Northern Ireland before 1998 was a very different process than it is now. The animosities between the two communities were so strong that anybody coming from Dublin was naturally suspect. He leant over backwards to accommodate unionists and to try to bring about mutual reconciliation and peace in Northern Ireland and took a fair amount of flak for so doing. His aim at all times was to take the gun out of Irish politics, to stop the bombs and killings and to stop the communal hatred and replace it with a different type of politics.

Senator O'Reilly also mentioned John Bruton's European views and it occurs to me that he was a committed European federalist. It is undoubtedly the case that he would have been disappointed by Brexit, as we all are. His views on Europe were not mainstream Irish views because they were probably more federalist than most Irish people would be. Again, he never concealed his commitment to a federalist Europe and made it plain at every hand's turn that he aspired to it.

He eventually ended up, by irony, as the chief representative of all the businesses in the International Financial Services Centre, IFSC. That was a strange outcome because it was a body largely established at the instigation of his great rival, Charles Haughey. Again, his aim in all of that was not self-promotion but to ensure that the economic success of this country developed in the way that it has.

The most important point about John Bruton was his sense of humour. He was highly intelligent and imaginative, and was frequently way ahead of others in conversation, but his laugh and his enjoyment of company endure. I remember dinners in King's Inns when the whole dining hall was shaking with his laughter. I always thought he was the most genial and pleasant person with whom one could deal.

Those things having been said, Finola, Matthew, Emily, Juliana and Mary-Elizabeth have lost a wonderful husband and father but they should be buoyed to some extent in their grief by the huge outpouring of admiration and gratitude we have seen over the past few days.Again, to Richard, another person who has quietly devoted his entire life to public service, I extend my deepest sympathy on the loss of his brother John. For one family to produce two politicians who have quietly but consistently served the State when it was not in their economic interest to do so, is significant. It probably was not economically necessary for them to become involved in politics. It was probably to their detriment that they did but their belief in their values has driven them. I will end on this point. We are, as has been said, including by Senator Cassells here, living in a world where people hide behind anonymity to attack, to denigrate, to drag people down, to distrust their motivation and to make allegations of corruption or cynicism or whatever against everybody else but if we look back on John Bruton's contribution to Irish public life, there is a better kind of politics and it should not die with John Bruton. We should all dedicate ourselves to upholding, if not all his political beliefs, at least his personal values and his commitment to Ireland as a functioning democracy.