Et Tu, Bruton

His brother, John Bruton, was the leader of Fine Gael and served as Taoiseach. Now, Richard Bruton is a key member of the opposition front bench. Would he have anything different to offer if he was Minister for Finance?

Jason O'Toole, 24 Aug 2009

When he won the battle for the leadership of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny named his defeated leadership rival Richard Bruton finance spokesman and Deputy Leader of the party. It is a role in which Bruton has excelled. Indeed there are those who believe that, over the past 12 months, as the country plunged into ever-deeper financial turmoil, the younger brother of the former Fine Gael leader and ex-Taoiseach John Bruton has thoroughly eclipsed the party leader.

Unlike his opposite number, Brian Lenihan, Bruton has the advantage of having studied economics. A graduate from UCD, he went on to study at Oxford, where he wrote his MPhil thesis on the subject – of all issues – of Irish public debt. As his party's finance spokesman, Bruton, more than any other politician on the opposition benches, should have concrete alternative solutions to the tactics the government have been applying to drag Ireland out of this recession.

So how would the alternative Minister for Finance handle the worst financial crisis Ireland has had to endure since the foundation of the State?

Jason O’Toole: With regard to the Irish economy, how did it all go pear-shaped?

Richard Bruton: The fatal flaw was that they forgot what it takes to survive in a small, open economy – that, long-term, a country like Ireland survives by being able to trade abroad, not by selling houses to one another at vastly inflated prices. The government got sucked up into the euphoria about property, as if it was a long-term prospect. The regulators failed to check the gross excesses in the banking system. And – like many other property bubbles – it has burst and the damage done to ordinary families is huge.

You mention the gross excesses of the banking system...

We have multiple problems, but at the core it was an old-fashioned property bubble, funded by the banking system, which destroyed our competitiveness. Property became so expensive that costs in every other area were driven up. We have been losing exporting market share for five years in a row. The government were warned but did nothing about it. We are bottom of the league in strategic infrastructure – ports, electricity, energy, telecommunications, in costs of delivery of these key infrastructures.

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