Ruairi Quinn

Ruairi Quinn, TD
Leader of the Labour Party
In office October, 1997 – August, 2002
Preceded by	Dick Spring
Succeeded by	Pat Rabbitte
Minister for Finance
In office December 15, 1994 – June 26, 1997
Preceded by	Bertie Ahern
Succeeded by	Charlie McCreevy
Personal details
Born	(1946-04-02) 2 April 1946 Dublin, Éire
Political party	Labour Party

Ruairi Quinn (Irish: Ruairí Ó Cuinn) (born 2 April, 1946) is an Irish Labour Party politician. He is currently a Teachta Dála (TD) for Dublin South East. He was Minister for Finance from 1994 to 1997, and leader of the Labour Party from 1997 to 2002.

Youth

Ruairi Quinn was born on 2 April 1946. His family were prominent republicans in the South Down area in the 1920s, taking an active part in the IRA during the War of Independence and the Civil War. The Quinns were prosperous merchants in Newry, Co Down, but were forced to move south to Dublin in the 1930s where Quinn's father built a successful business career. Quinn was educated at Blackrock College where he was not only academically successful but also was an outstanding athlete and a member of the Senior Cup rugby team. From an early age, he was interested in art and won the all-Ireland Texaco Children's Art competition. This led him to study architecture at University College Dublin in 1964 and later at the School of Ekistics in Athens. In 1965, Quinn joined the Labour Party working for Michael O'Leary's successful campaign in Dublin North Central. In the following years, Quinn was a leading student radical in UCD demanding reform of the University's structures and the oldfashioned architectural course that then prevailed. He rejected the Catholicism of his youth and became an existential atheist. He also travelled in Europe and became a europhile which was to be a defining characteristic of his political career. He qualified as an architect in 1969 and married for the first time that year before embarking on studies in Athens. He and his wife had a son, Malachi, in 1971, and a daughter, Sine, in 1972. He became an architect with Dublin Corporation in 1971.

In 1972, Quinn decided he would stand for Labour in the next General Election and hoped he would be the running mate of the sitting Labour deputy for Dublin South East, Dr Noel Browne. The party organisation was largely moribund since Browne's election in 1969 as Browne had been ill and little work had been done locally. When the election was called in February, 1973, Quinn found he was the only Labour candidate as Browne refused to stand in principled opposition to Labour's decision to enter into a pre-election pact with Fine Gael to form a National Coalition. Quinn lost by 39 votes to Fergus O'Brien of Fine Gael in the final count. Following the 1973 election, Quinn began to rebuild the Labour Party in Dublin South East with his mainly youthful supporters. He won a Council seat on Dublin Corporation in the local elections in 1974 in his own ward and took a leading role in the Labour Group on the City Council.

He was a partner in an architecture firm from 1973 to 1982. In 1976 he was appointed to Seanad Éireann when Senator Brendan Halligan won a byeelection in Dublin South West and his Senate seat became vacant. He was first elected a Labour Party TD for Dublin South East at the 1977 general election. Quinn was at this time closely associated with environmental issues being the first professional architect and town planner ever elected to the Dáil. He served as environment spokesperson for the Labour Party and was very close to the Party Leader, Frank Cluskey, whom he had voted for in the leadership contest of 1977. He lost his seat at the 1981 general election and served in Seanad Éireann again. He was re-elected as TD in February 1982 general election and has retained his seat since.

Early ministerial career

In 1982 he became Minister of State at the Department of the Environment. Between 1983 and 1986 he served as Minister for Labour. From 1986-1987 he was appointed Minister for the Public Service. In 1989 he became deputy leader of the Labour Party. He was director of elections for Mary Robinson's successful Presidential election campaign.

Minister for Enterprise & Employment

In the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition government of 1993/1994 Quinn became Minister for Enterprise and Employment.

He oversaw the merger of the former Department of Industry and Commerce with the former Department of Labour, with a new focus on enterprise development and the reduction of the then high level of unemployment. Quinn implemented reform of industrial strategy and reorganised the industrial development agencies. He also introduced the Community Employment Programme to provide activity and involvement for unemployed workers in 1994. This proved to be particularly successful.

Quinn was seen as comfortable with the Fianna Fáil members of the cabinet. He also tended to be a moderniser in economic terms but, despite attempts, failed to close the Irish Steel company in Haulbowline, Co Cork, a classic loss-making smoke stack industry that harked back to an earlier era. Nevertheless, it was in August, 1994, while Quinn and Fianna Fáil's Bertie Ahern were economic ministers, that the Irish economy was first described as the "Celtic Tiger".

Quinn, along with many of his Labour cabinet colleagues, strove unsuccessfully to keep the Fianna Fáil Labour Government together during the Father Brendan Smyth crisis in November, 1994. He records in his autobiography that he still cannot understand why that Government fell.

Minister for Finance

The following year he became Minister for Finance in the Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left "rainbow coalition" government. Quinn took a relatively conservative line as Finance Minister, being conscious of his position as the first Labour Minister for Finance in Irish political history. He quickly proved his competence, dispelling opposition jibes and stock market fears about a social democratic minister holding the sensitive finance portfolio. The Irish economy continued to perform, while inflation and the government finances were kept under firm control. Unemployment gradually fell and public debt levels improved.

During Quinn's tenure as Minister for Finance, the overall tax burden in Ireland (the ratio of tax revenue, including pay related social insurance levies, to gross national product) fell from 38.7% to 34.8%, of by 1.3 percentage points each year. He achieved this by limiting current government spending to grow by 6.8% in nominal terms or 4.8% in real terms, against a backdrop of improving economic fortunes, due to increasing investment in technology intensive sectors of the Irish economy.

Under Quinn, the General Government Balance went from a deficit of 2.1% in 1995 to a surplus of 1.1% in 1997. The General Government Debt went from 81% of GNP in 1995 to 63.6% in 1997. The year before Quinn became an economic Minister in 1993, Irish economic growth was 2.5% (1992). In 1993 GNP growth was 3%; in 1994, 6.5%; in 1995, 8%; in 1996, 7.8%; and finally in 1997, 10.3%.

The unemployment rate fell from 1993 to 1997 as follows: 15.7% in 1993; 14.7% in 1994; 12.2% in 1995; 11.9% in 1996; and finally, 10.3% in 1997.

Quinn served as the President of the Ecofin Council of the EU in 1996, and worked to accelerate the launch of the European Single Currency, whilst securing Ireland's qualification for the eurozone. Quinn, and his party leader and Tánaiste, Foreign Minister Dick Spring enjoyed a somewhat uneasy relationship during the Rainbow Coalition, as recounted in Quinn's 2005 memoir. Quinn's achievements in the Finance Ministry, were insufficiently highlighted to avert a reduction in the number of seats attained by his party, in the 1997 general election. Many other ministers of Quinn's own party were under significant pressure form the media (particularly the Irish Independent) concerning allegations of cronyism ("jobs for the boys") and abusing the privileges of office. In comparison, the then opposition, under Bertie Ahern, placed heavy reliance on economic policy, and claimed credit for the country's improving economy.

Leader of the Labour Party

Accession to Leadership

In October, 1997 Dick Spring retired as leader of the Labour Party following an unsuccessful campaign by the Labour Candidate, Adi Roche, in the Irish Presidential Election. Ruairi Quinn defeated Brendan Howlin to become the new leader. In 1999 the Labour Party and Democratic Left merged. Proinsias De Rossa of the latter party became president, while Quinn remained as leader of the party. He used the years of leadership to develop a strong policy platform, publishing a Spatial Strategy for future development of the country, promoting universal access to health insurance, advocating reform of the Garda Síochána (police), and arguing for closer European integration. Fianna Fáil countered by cleverly exploiting Quinn's comfortable middle class background, labelling him "Mr Angry from Sandymount," the middle class district of Dublin where Quinn is a longtime resident, and representative of, in the Dáil.

2002 General Election

In the 2002 General Election, which saw the ruling Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrat Government reelected, the Labour Party returned the exact same level of parliamentary seats it had held. Quinn fought that election on an independent platform although he indicated a preference to enter Government with the Fine Gael party he had served with in the Rainbow era. Quinn's strategy was predicated on Labour holding the balance of power and keeping a distance from the two bigger parties. This underestimated the attraction for the electorate of the outgoing Ahern Government that had enjoyed extraordinary economic growth and prosperity.

Realising that the choice was between a majority Fianna Fáil Government on the one hand, or a Government of Fianna Fáil with a watchful partner on the other, the Progressive Democrats, through their President, Michael McDowell, a constituency rival of Quinn's, seized the moment and put themselves forward as the guarantor of the public interest in a new Fianna Fáil Government. This left Labour stranded and almost as irrelevant to the outcome of the election. Under the leadership of Michael Noonan and Jim Mitchell, Fine Gael conducted a disastrous campaign, alienating even their most traditional support with badly conceived policy proposals. This resulted in heavy Fine Gael losses, being reduced to 31 seats, their worst performance in decades.

Meanwhile, the Progressive Democrats doubled their seats to eight and emerged with two full cabinet positions in a new coalition with Fianna Fáil. Quinn was gravely disappointed that he had failed to increase the number of seats his party held, in an election that resulted in new gains for small parties on the left end of the political spectrum, even though Fine Gael had lost some twenty seats. Accepting that he would now be in opposition for another term, and seeking to spend more time with his young family, Quinn announced that he would not seek re-election for another six year term as leader of the Labour Party, at the end of August, 2002.

Post-Leadership

In October,2002 Quinn's term as Party Leader expired and he retired as Labour leader, being replaced in a leadership election by Pat Rabbitte. He is still a TD, being Labour Party spokesperson on Education and Science, and he leads the European Movement Ireland, a civil society organisation campaigning on European issues in Ireland. Quinn is also Vice-President and Treasurer of the Party of European Socialists. He is a brother of Lochlann Quinn, former Chairman of AIB Bank, and a first-cousin of Senator Feargal Quinn. His nephew, Oisín Quinn is a Labour Party Dublin City Councillor and Dáil candidate.

In 2005, his political memoir, "Straight Left", was published.

2007 General Election

Quinn was successfully reelected for the Labour Party in the 2007 General Election. He increased his share of the poll by some 4% and was comfortably returned to the 30th Dáil. He was nominated for the post of Ceann Comhairle but was defeated by John O'Donoghue. Quinn became Labour Spokesperson on Education and Science as a member of Eamon Gilmore's front bench in September, 2007.

Political career

Template:Incumbent succession box

See also

• Families in the Oireachtas

External links

• Ruairi Quinn TD Website

This page incorporates information from this member's entry in the Oireachtas Members Database