94 Modern Irish Politics

The last thirty years have been a tumultuous time for Irish politics. A series of governments in the 1970s and 1980s fell because they couldn’t end the violence in the North or fix the Republic of Ireland’s persistent unemployment. In addition, thorny social problems and an abundance of scandals made a rocky path for Irish politicians. Fortunately, matters seem to have improved in the 1990s.

No political issue in Ireland has aroused as much emotion as the question of the North. The Fianna Fáil Party, Ireland’s dominant political party throughout the century, was founded on the premise that Ireland should never have been divided. After the issue nearly tore the country apart in the 1920s, politicians placed it on the backburner as a continuing source of grievance. De Valera’s constitution of 1937 even laid claim to the territory as part of the Republic. In the following three decades, however, most people accepted that the North belongs to the United Kingdom.

When the Troubles erupted in the North, many people in the Republic had deeply conflicting feelings. On the one hand, they wanted to side with their Catholic brethren in Ulster, but on the other, they didn’t want to disrupt their own country or their peaceful relationship with the United Kingdom. A crisis broke out in 1971 when two Cabinet ministers, including the future taoiseach Charles Haughey, were implicated in a scheme to smuggle weapons to Northern Catholics. The ministers resigned, but the question remained of how far the Republic should involve itself in the crisis.

In the end, the Republic wound up siding with Britain—both nations agreed that they would rather see an end to the violence than press their respective territorial claims. In 1985, they signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, a framework for a peace settlement. Unfortunately, combatants in the North refused to give up the fight.

Irish leaders continued to try to end the violence. In 1998 Bertie Ahern, the leader of Fianna Fáil and the Irish taoiseach, took part in the Good Friday Peace Talks that finally brought a lasting peace agreement. Ahern brought back a referendum for the Irish people to approve the agreement, specifically the Republic of Ireland’s rejection of its historical claim to Northern Ireland. The referendum passed by a wide margin. The question of the North is by no means answered for good, but for the first time in many years people believe that it’s moving in the right direction.

In recent decades, a series of political scandals has significantly reduced the faith of the Irish in their leaders. Many of these scandals took place during the administration of Charlie Haughey, son-in-law to the legendary Fianna Fáil leader Sean Lemass, who had dominated Irish politics in the 1950s. Haughey had already been implicated in a smuggling scandal in 1971, but he somehow managed to clear his name and rise up to lead Fianna Fáil from 1979 to 1992, serving as taoiseach for several of those years.

The voters liked Haughey, but a shadow of corruption always seemed to follow his administration. The police force had a series of scandals under the Haughey regime. Several government departments experienced financial scandals, which somehow never implicated Haughey himself. The worst crisis came when it was discovered that Haughey’s supporters had been wire-tapping journalists hostile to his administration; it was an Irish form of Watergate. Somehow, Haughey’s popularity with the Fianna Fáil faithful kept him in charge of the party until 1992, when a biting investigation into corruption in the beef industry finally did him in.

Shadows of corruption still haunt the Irish political system, but there have been relatively few major crises in the last decade. It seems that current politicians are either more honest or more discreet.

The Irish political structure continues to be something of an anomaly, since the two dominant parties are divided less by ideology than by historical associations. Fianna Fáil, the party founded by Éamon de Valera and the forces who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, has been the dominant party throughout the century. Fine Gael, the organization that emerged from the Free State politicians who supported the treaty, has managed to take control of the government on a number of occasions with the help of third parties. The major political parties in Ireland today are:

• Fianna Fáil—the original anti-treaty party

• Fine Gael—the original pro-treaty party

• Labour—a liberal workers’ party

• Progressive Democrats—an offshoot of Fianna Fáil that is economically conservative and socially liberal; it has allied with Fine Gael at times

• Democratic Left—the modern incarnation of the original Sinn Féin; leftist but no longer socialist

• Greens—an environmental party