I joined Fine Gael late in 1965, and my first graphic political memory is of speaking, without a microphone, to Mass-goers in Culmullen, Co Meath, on behalf of the late Tom O'Higgins, writes John Bruton
The presidential election of 1966, when O'Higgins came within 10,000 votes of defeating Éamon de Valera, marked a turning away from the dream of an Irish-speaking and self-sufficient Ireland towards a slightly more materialistic but more European destiny.
The other dominant event of 1966 was the farmers' rights campaign. Farming was an immensely important sector in Ireland then, and the early economic development programmes had expected an Irish economic revival to be based on agricultural rather than industrial exports.
Farmers were optimists then. Producing food efficiently was their goal. Nowadays, policy is unfortunately directing them towards becoming form-filling landscape gardeners.
When I entered the Dáil in 1969, very few TDs tabled questions, and all the questions were answered within the week. Very few amendments were tabled to Bills, and those that were tabled were taken seriously.
Now, thanks to the improved competence of TDs, virtually every deputy is adept at framing dozens of Dáil questions, and legislative amendments. But the exercise has become self-defeating.
There are so many questions that no one pays any attention to the answers.
There are so many amendments that large parts of Bills are never properly examined at all. All business is timetabled. Filibusters have become impossible no matter how good the cause.
There is no control on ministerial answers. If a TD complains about an uninformative reply to the Ceann Comhairle, the Ceann Comhairle can do nothing.
One simple Dáil reform would change all this. The Ceann Comhairle should be given the right to rule that a Minister had not adequately answered a Dáil question, and require him or her to answer it again.
My first ministerial job was as a parliamentary secretary in the Department of Education.
At that time, that Department presented the entire file to a Minister to make a decision. On one occasion I found a file on my table that had remarks written on it in Irish by Éamon de Valera back in 1941.
On these files, officials disagreed trenchantly with one another. Since the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act, officials are no longer as forthright in the notes that they put on files. This is a pity because there is a clarity about the written word that is never achieved in oral decisions.
We went out of office in 1977, partly because of Jack Lynch's electoral manifesto of that year. That manifesto was something we paid dearly for throughout the 1980s when interest rates rose dramatically. It postponed the emergence of the Celtic Tiger by at least 15 years.
When I became minister for finance in 1981 we had to increase taxes because there was no appetite for reductions in expenditure. This was not surprising because so much of government spending remains almost impossible to reduce. Interest on debts, salaries, and welfare rates are irreducible in practice.
The attitude to State enterprise was different then. I remember proposing that the National Development Corporation, which was to set up new State enterprises in the commercial field, should be obliged to sell off its investments after a few years so as to recycle funds for reinvestment. This was strenuously resisted by the Labour Party, which then seemed to feel that it was wrong in principle that any business once owned by the State should ever be sold.
In 1981, as finance minister, I published A Better way to Plan the Nation's Finances. I wanted government budget spending proposals to be costed over three years ahead, and that the budget should be presented by the government to the Dáil in draft form three months before it came into effect. The first proposal eventually was adopted.
But the idea of publishing the budget in draft form never was realised. This is a pity. If ever we are to arrive at a mature political culture, in which real choices are presented to the people, we will have to start publishing annual budgets in draft form.
That would improve the level of political debate in Ireland, and expose the real choices we face as a people.
My period as Taoiseach, from 1994 to 1997, was one of the most enjoyable of my entire life.
One of the great benefits that the Rainbow Coalition had was the programme managers' system initiated by the Labour Party. It ensured that Cabinet meetings did not become bogged down in checking facts or debating options which did not really exist. The Labour Party deserves great credit for this innovation in public administration.
My most recent role was in the Convention on the Future of Europe.
I was surprised at the extent to which institutional rivalry dominated proceedings. For some, enhancing the powers of the European Parliament became an end to itself. For others, enhancing the Council of Ministers, and for yet others enhancing the exclusive right of the Commission.
Turf wars sometimes seemed more important than the common purpose one was trying to achieve.
After almost 50 years of the EU, I am convinced that the time has come to initiate a genuine Europe-wide democratic election to choose the president of the European Commission. If Europeans are to sacrifice national interest to a wider cause they must feel that they can put the European government out of office, in the same way as they can put their national government out.
In the meantime, we should give national parliaments, like the Dáil, a much greater input to European policy-making. The new draft European constitution will go a long way in this direction. I hope people will give it their Yes vote.