Pioneering minister who brokered coalition deals

OBITUARY: SÉAMUS BRENNAN, who has died aged 60, represented Dublin South in Dáil Éireann for the past 27 years and served in…

OBITUARY:SÉAMUS BRENNAN, who has died aged 60, represented Dublin South in Dáil Éireann for the past 27 years and served in governments led by Charles Haughey, Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern. He was a senator for four years before being elected to the Dáil.

Appointed as the party's youngest general secretary in 1973, aged just 25 years, he founded Ógra Fianna Fáil and was credited with introducing US-style razzmatazz to Irish electioneering in 1977.

First elected to the Dáil in 1981, he was rewarded for his extraordinary vote-winning skills in Dublin South with a string of ministerial portfolios, including education, transport and most recently arts, sport and tourism. Tipped in the 1980s as a possible future party leader and taoiseach, he once admitted to coveting the job of minister for finance.

A shrewd and likeable personality, his political judgment was astute. During his period as government chief whip between 1997 and 2002 he managed to keep the minority Fianna Fáil-PD coalition in office with the support of Independents.

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He began his ministerial career as minister of state at the Department of Industry and Commerce between 1987 and 1989. He became a full minister when he was appointed minister for tourism and transport in 1989, taking on board communications in 1991. He served as minister for education from 1992 to 1993.

In 1993 the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition came to power and he became minister of state at the Department of Enterprise and Employment.

Between 1994 and 1997, when Fianna Fáil was in opposition, he served as party spokesman on transport, energy and communications.

When Fianna Fáil returned to power in 1997, in a minority coalition with the Progressive Democrats, he was appointed government chief whip. Much of his work was taken up with keeping the Independent TDs onside.

Following Fianna Fáil's re-election in 2002 he was appointed minister for transport and then, in 2004, minister for social and family affairs.

Immediately after the general election in 2007, he played a key role in negotiations with the Green Party, which led to the formation of the current Government. He forecast in 2005 that Fianna Fáil would be in coalition with the Greens and opened lines of communication to the party to ensure that this was what happened when the election numbers stacked up.

Born in Galway in 1948, he was the son of a builder who ran his own business, He attended an all-Irish speaking primary school and then St Joseph's College run by the Patrician Brothers. He developed an early interest in politics and began to canvass for Fianna Fáil in his teenage years.

He met his wife, Ann O'Shaughnessy, at university where he graduated with a degree in economics. The couple had two sons and four daughters.

Having completed his primary degree, he studied commerce at UCG and UCD to masters level, qualifying as an accountant and economist. After a short stint working in the private sector he was recruited by Jack Lynch as general secretary to revitalise Fianna Fáil when the party was thrust into opposition in 1973 after 16 years in power.

Setting out his political philosophy in an interview with The Irish Timesin 1975, Brennan said: "I would not like the party to get a 'right of centre' image. I think it was Lemass or de Valera who said that Fianna Fáil was a party slightly left of centre and, while that was some time ago, my influence will be used to keep it in that area."

He qualified this somewhat by stating that he was a conservative in relation to economic matters but liberal on social issues.

Some years later, Brennan described John F Kennedy and Seán Lemass as his teenage heroes. His pro-business approach came to the fore during his ministerial career when he championed the liberalisation of markets and the opening up of State monopolies to competition.

A consummate politician at constituency level, as well as on the national stage, he was never shy about publicity. Personalised local road maps and World Cup calendars were typical of his constituency literature. Never stuck for a soundbite, he declared at the opening of the Luas bridge at the Taney Cross in Dundrum - near his Churchtown home - that the structure would become known as "the Golden Gate of the southside".

One of his key ministerial initiatives was his decision in 1989 to take operating rights on three air routes from Aer Lingus and to give them exclusively to Ryanair. The move had enormous repercussions for the airline industry, as well as Irish tourism, establishing the platform on which Ryanair was able to become one of the biggest airlines in Europe.

His period as minister for education between 1992 and 1993 was largely unremarkable although he issued a Green Paper which promised to phase out small schools and increase assessment and testing.

Ever the pragmatist, Brennan was not afraid to build bridges to politicians of other political hues and was widely liked in Leinster House. In the 1980s he called for an all-party approach to solving the economy's woes, and was instrumental in negotiating coalitions with both the Progressive Democrats and the Greens. He spoke against going into coalition with Labour in 1992 and was dropped from the cabinet by Albert Reynolds to make way for a Labour minister.

An opponent within Fianna Fáil of Charles Haughey, he was a member of the "Gang of 22" who sought to oust "The Boss" in 1982 and 1983. He was close to Des O'Malley at this time and was involved in the early discussions about the formation of a new political party. However, he opted out of the planning and chose not to leave Fianna Fáil when the Progressive Democrats were founded.

In 1989, Haughey gave Brennan the job, along with Charlie McCreevy, of negotiating a coalition deal with the PDs after that year's general election. Notwithstanding his friendship with O'Malley, he did not approve of allocating two cabinet seats to Fianna Fáil's partners in government.

He was rewarded by Haughey with his long-coveted promotion to the cabinet as minister for tourism and transport in the first Fianna Fáil-PD coalition in 1989. It was during that period in office that he effectively broke the Aer Lingus monopoly on the Dublin-London route by giving concessions to Ryanair.

During his second term as minister for transport between 2002 and 2004, he was faced with a range of thorny issues such as the introduction of competition in buses and the break-up of Aer Rianta. He frequently found himself on the opposite side of the argument to the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who tended to side with the trade unions opposed to the end of State monopolies. This limited his effectiveness in the transport area.

A year into the job The Irish Timesreported that he had to contend with "the taxi men, the bus drivers, the railway workers, the airlines, airport staff, coach drivers, Michael O'Leary and, of course, more than one million commuters".

Finding himself stymied by opponents at cabinet, he sometimes promised more than he could deliver but before leaving the department he did succeed in introducing the first phase of the drivers' penalty-points system despite opposition from Garda representative groups.

In a cabinet reshuffle in 2004, he was bitterly disappointed to be moved from transport to social and family affairs and saw it as a demotion. However, once he had recovered from the setback he set about his new job with a will and tried to bring the issue of pensions to the top of the political agenda. His attempt to highlight the poor pension provision for the bulk of the workforce outside the public sector did not endear him to some colleagues who preferred to long-finger the problem.

In the 2007 general election, however, he proved to have lost none of his vote-getting powers topping the poll in Dublin South. He was elected on the first count with a hugely impressive 13,373 first preferences.

More importantly his pre-election identification of the Greens as the key to yet another term for Fianna Fáil made him indispensable to Bertie Ahern and he was put on the negotiating team that drew up the programme for government. His reward was another term in the Cabinet, this time as minister for arts, sport and tourism in June 2007.

Deteriorating health limited his effectiveness in his final term of office and when Bertie Ahern stepped down in May of this year he asked not to be considered for reappointment.

In his letter of resignation he said that he had been "inducted into politics by Jack Lynch who remains, for me, one of the most inspirational Irish political figures of modern times".

He wrote to Taoiseach Brian Cowen: "I believe that you are a worthy successor and that you will uphold the very best traditions of our party." He did not mention Bertie Ahern in his letter.

Following the 1997 general election, he served as chairman of the National Millennium Committee. A co-author of the Nealon's Guides to the Dáil for a time, he once produced a directory of local authority contacts, entitled Brennan's Key to Local Authorities.

He is survived by his wife Ann, their two sons and four daughters.

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Séamus Brennan: born February 16th, 1948; died July 9th, 2008