Richard Bruton: four decades in politics but few enemies, despite heave against Enda Kenny’s leadership

Richard Bruton, who has announced his intention to retire at the next general election, has served as a councillor, senator, TD and as a minister who played a central role in three governments.

Currently chairman of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, he has been at the front rank of politics for over four decades and is widely liked and respected across all parties. Remarkably, for someone who was so prominent for so long, he made few political enemies.

Some opponents and observers dismissed the cerebral Bruton – who completed a master’s degree in economics at Oxford University – as a policy wonk, or as better suited to the role of policy adviser, rather than minister.

But he had a shrewd political sense, and was wise enough to the ways of Irish politics to ensure that he never neglected his home patch; elected first for the then constituency of Dublin North Central in February 1982, he retained his seat in every general election since – all 10 of them. Given Fine Gael’s fluctuating fortunes since in the period, it is quite the record.

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A junior minister in the last year of the Garret FitzGerald-led Fine Gael-Labour coalition, he joined the party’s front bench after FitzGerald’s defeat in the 1987 election. When the party returned to government in 1994 – led by his brother John – he was made minister for enterprise and employment.

But after losing the 1997 general election, Fine Gael was destined for a long period in opposition. After the electoral disaster of 2002, he contested the leadership, losing out to Enda Kenny, who made him finance spokesman and deputy leader.

He shone in the role and, despite Bertie Ahern’s seemingly unchallengeable dominance of Irish politics, Bruton’s contributions were central to making Fine Gael a viable alternative by the time of the 2007 election. Luckily for the party, it came up short in that contest; the financial crash, which would begin the following year, would decimate the government and reorder Irish politics.

But despite the difficulties of the Brian Cowen-led government (Ahern had departed in 2008), Fine Gael found it difficult to capitalise and by 2010 there was deep dissatisfaction with Kenny’s leadership, most noticeably among a group of younger TDs.

Eventually, after a particularly poor opinion poll result in the early summer of 2010, Bruton led a challenge to Kenny. It was poorly timed, and even more poorly executed; aided by the muscular political skills of Phil Hogan, Kenny beat back the challenge. He became taoiseach eight months later.

However, Bruton was too much of an asset to be left out of the cabinet and he was given his old enterprise portfolio. His brief was job creation and he set about it with gusto, drawing up an “action plan for jobs” which broke down the task of creating an environment conducive to job creation into hundreds of individual actions to be taken by government and its agencies, with regular monitoring of their completion.

It was an approach that demonstrated his knowledge of how to work the levers of power; as the economy rebounded, new jobs were created at a pace that saw Bruton hit his target of 100,000 new jobs by 2016 two years early.

In the subsequent government, Bruton served stints as minister for education and minister for communications and the environment, unveiling a far-reaching climate action plan in the latter role. But there was no room for him in Cabinet when the current three-party Coalition was formed after the 2020 general election.

Instead, he was made chairman of the Fine Gael parliamentary party and, while he has remained active in Dáil debates and around Leinster House, the decision at the age of 70 to step down is no great surprise. It will, however, deprive Fine Gael of a sharp intellect, a keen political sense and rarely-matched wealth of political experience.

There has been some speculation over whether some of Fine Gael’s other longer-serving TDs will contest the next general election.

However, former minister for justice Charlie Flanagan (66) has previously publicly said he will run and Fine Gael sources believe Louth TD Fergus O’Dowd (74) also intends to seek re-election.

Kildare North TD Bernard Durkan (78) confirmed that he intends to run again telling the Irish Times: “I’ve always said that I will run for as long as the people elected me. I said that many years ago and I continue to hold that view.”

He added: “As long as you can make a contribution for the people who elect you the obvious thing to do is to continue to do so.”