A Sharp Left Turn

Sometimes the cards fall in dramatic fashion and leave you unexpectedly holding an ace. That’s definitely how Democratic Left politician Eamon Gilmore feels following the political reshuffle last Christmas which led to his appointment as Junior Minister at the Department of the Marine, with Responsibility for Port Development and the Law of the Sea.

As the latter job definition relates specifically to ‘pollution and nuclear hazards’, Gilmore is now in a position to directly influence the Coalition government’s action on issues such as Sellafield, a subject about which he has consistently challenged Government policy in the past.

The abolition of third-level college fees in the recent budget, is another issue that has always figured high in Eamon Gilmore’s list of priorities. Indeed, after being elected head of the Union of Students of Ireland for the first time roughly twenty years ago he immediately attacked the educational system, describing it as elitist and designed to exclude lower income families from access to higher education.

A much-admired and well-supported constituency worker in the borough of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, he also has relatively unorthodox views on religion – for an Irish politician – and has recently accused the Catholic Church of ‘sectarian hostility’ in terms of its attitude to multi-denominational schools. We met in his crisp new office in the Department of the Marine to discuss this, and other subjects . . .

Joe Jackson: Many commentators suggest that the recent budget didn’t go far enough in terms of tackling poverty and even Proinsias De Rossa, as Minister for Social Welfare, was forced to agree on RTE that the 2.5% social welfare increase, for example, was far from enough. In this sense didn’t Democratic Left, allied to Labour, fail its core voters?

Eamon Gilmore: What the budget set out to do was to attack the causes of poverty, one of which is unemployment. We can’t continue to deal with poverty simply by sticking band aids on it. The main feature of the budget was to try and address the wedge that exists between those who are at work on low incomes and those who are not at work. It’s done that successfully, in terms of the reduction in the PRSI burden, particularly on people on low pay; the tax measures that will help the same workers; the measures taken to help children, as in the increase in child welfare benefits. In this sense the budget was, obviously, a success.

But surely those measures were relatively minor, and the basic increase in social welfare should have been more than 2.5%.

Everybody would like to see a greater increase in social welfare but that 2.5% has to be seen in the context of the fact that, the increase has been brought forward. The strongest criticism I got, over the years, in relation to social welfare, was that the date of the increases was always being put off. It’s easy for Fianna Fail to now say it should be 3% or ‘we would have given more’ but it’s cynical to give people the extra half per cent then put off the date of the increase for another couple of months. Social Welfare recipients got their increase last year in August and at the rate Fianna Fail were going we would have reached the point where we wouldn’t get the increases till Christmas. So let’s give this Government credit for bringing that forward to June this year, and De Rossa and Ruari Quinn have already indicated that it is their intention to bring it forward again in future budgets. And let’s not forget the other increases in the social welfare area, as in the increase in the fuel allowance, the child benefit increases and the fact that single, unemployed people used to get a minimum of £10 a week, now they get £25.

But £25 is obviously a pittance and hardly enough for anyone to live on, in any circumstances.

It’s no great shakes, but if people are into dealing with the budget on percentages it’s a 150% increase and it does make a difference. And let’s not forget that we stopped the cutbacks in social welfare this year. Don’t people remember Charlie McCreevey’s ‘dirty dozen’, which subsequently became the ‘filthy fifteen’ cuts that were made in this area? Past governments had also started taxing social welfare, whereas this government has reversed that trend by taking child allowances out of the equation. So, even in terms of social welfare this budget has been good. £212 million is a substantial figure and that includes, for another example, the money that will finally be paid to 70,000 married women who have been waiting for ten years to get what is owed to them.

But the pledge to pay that money is part of the last coalition’s Programme for Government. This coalition can hardly take credit for that.

Past governments have put up every legal obstacle against those women receiving their entitlements, even though, yes, that was agreed as part of the Programme for Government. But this budget has, at least, made a start to paying out the £240 million that is owed by allocating £60 million this year.

So how do you feel about the view that the budget was basically a Labour budget designed to placate its middle class voters?

It’s a misreading of the budget to start saying ‘what did Labour get out of this?’ or ‘what did Democratic Left get?’ It was an agreed budget and there was a deliberate strategy in that budget, which is one that Democratic Left strongly advocates and that I support. And that is that the principle thing we’ve got to do in this country is to put it to work. At the end of the day, we want to get people off welfare and into work. This country cannot sustain something between a quarter of a million and three hundred thousand people out of work. That’s our major problem, and the budget did go some way towards addressing that, as well as key areas such as child poverty.

But what about the area of education? The abolition of third-level fees has been described by one Labour spokesperson as “a middle class issue.” This view is compounded by other commentators who suggest that inadequate parental means and inadequate grants still dictate that the doors to higher education have not really been flung open for low income families.

That’s misreading the situation. There are three problems that have to be addressed in higher education, the first of which is the critical shortage of places in the third-level area. That is contributing to the phenomenal rat-race for points which means that the numbers students now have to get are just unreal. Only an increase in the number of places will decrease that kind of pressure. Then, in the area of student support, you have the question of fees and the maintenance grant. On the question of fees people on very high incomes have been covenanting so they weren’t concerned about the fees issue. Therefore the typical person affected by the fees problem was, let’s say, a nurse with three children on £25,000 a year. The biggest problem that parent would have in contemplating supporting a child in third level education is the fees, because you have to assemble a lump sum of £2,000 a year. In that sense there is a psychological block, which has now been removed. And the point is that the problem of access to third-level education doesn’t occur the day the pupil does the Leaving Cert, it occurs further back in the system. If you get children from a poor background they, themselves, will know how tough it is at home so they won’t want to add to the family burden by asking for that lump sum. In this sense, the system has begun to be broken down. And people who will really benefit are those in the low to low-middle income bracket.

But what about the people at the bottom end of the scale, like working class families in Glasthule, Sallynoggin, Ballybrack – all of which form part of your constituency? In those areas the proportion of students who go on to third-level education is still nearer the 1% inner city level than the 60% that attends from an area like Foxrock. What does this budget do for those, for people who haven’t got mothers who are nurses on twenty five grand a year?

It opens up the doors for them, too. The precedent is what happened at second level when fees were abolished, and people from such areas did avail of the new opportunities. For anyone in poor circumstances the big problem is assembling the fees. But the whole area of educational disadvantage is a lot more complex than the question of fees or grants. Besides, someone who is from an unemployed family would qualify for a grant in any event – as I did myself. And between the grant and working and borrowing you can manage to just about get there. Yet the real problem is the question of motivation, the value that’s placed on education in such families and even basic things like the facilities for study. Take a case of a family where there are five children, in a three bedroom home and the oldest daughter has had a baby recently. How on earth is a sixteen year old going to get even a corner in that house to do the kind of study that is necessary to get the points to get into college? These are the broader issues that have to be looked at in terms of educational disadvantage.

Last year you accused the Catholic Church of ‘downright bigotry’ and ‘sectarian hostility’ in relation to its attitude to multi-denominational schools – another issue that would be of key importance in a constituency like Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown.

The particular case I was referring to was a school in Crumlin where the multi-denominational school had been burned down and the local Church authorities weren’t willing to make an empty school building nearby available. But I do feel, really strongly, that educational resources such as school buildings which were built, in the most part, by public money, should not be let out of the education system. They should be used for education. Indeed, if there is a demand in an area for multi-denominational schools and there is an empty school, albeit under Church control, it should be made available for that school or, indeed, for adult education or whatever the case might be. Educational buildings, which were built primarily out of tax-payers money, should not be sold out of the education system at a time when there is a need for a variety of educational uses.

That said, the Church are digging their heels in on this issue and, in many areas, asserting what they claim is an “absolute right” to do with those buildings what they choose.

That has happened and they are wrong.

But how can that “absolute right” be taken from them? How can the circumstances that give them that power, be changed?

There are many ways. One is by ensuring that when building grants are made available to schools there should be the condition attached that if the building is no longer required for educational use by that particular authority that it can be transferred, or bought back, or whatever, in order to be kept in educational use.

Can such a condition be back-dated, in any way, in order to impose on Church authorities the requirement to make such buildings available for multi-denominational schools, for example?

I don’t think it would be entirely impossible, because the Church has a very big interest in education, and one could convince the Church authorities of the desirability of releasing buildings that are no longer in use. Particularly, let’s say, when the same Church authorities are looking for grants for building extensions elsewhere. That’s something that can definitely be achieved.

You’ve also suggested that the sale of schools was a rip-off last year, with less than £70,000 going back to the State out of the sale of 70 primary schools. You called on the Minister for Education for an explanation. Did you receive that explanation?

The explanation I got was that the Department of Education was continuing to pursue it and, as far as I’m aware, that is still the position. But my point still stands. There is a desperate need for additional resources in the educational area – as in schools all over the country looking for improvements and modernisation. And, in this context, it is patently wrong that schools which, again, were built with State assistance and tax-payers money, are now being sold out of the system and the money not being returned to the State. That whole area must be fully explored – and the sooner it is the better.

One hears all this talk about the hold organisations like Opus Dei have over the Irish Government and the Civil Service. Now that you are a Minister do you have to draw back in terms of accusing Church authorities of ‘downright bigotry’ and so on, lest you suffer the consequences?

No. Nobody has put any pressure on me since I became a Minister. But then that may be because Opus Dei may not have a great deal of influence in the Fishing industry or the Marine area!

They would, surely, if there were reports of a Christ-like figure seen walking on water near Sandycove, or wherever! So, is the power of Opus Dei over-rated?

There never has been any pressure put on me, in this respect and nor would I accept such pressure. And Government policy can only be determined by those who are elected by the people. It cannot be determined by secret organisations seeking to influence it, either at political level, or at administrative level.

You studied psychology. Do you agree with Freud that the belief in God is symptomatic of psychotic illness.

If that’s the case there obviously are an awful lot of people who are psychotically ill! And another thing I learned from psychology is that normality is statistically determined. Ipso facto, the abnormal would be those who don’t believe in God!

So are you ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’? Do you believe in God?

No. But then it’s a bit like hedging your bets in that I probably hope there’s a God. Yet I’m not religious, no.

When I interviewed John Bruton it was apparent that his Christian beliefs dictated his position as an anti-abortionist, in all circumstances. How does not believing in God effect you in terms of that particular issue, for example? Are you free from those kind of fetters?

No. And I don’t think you ever are. I was born into a Catholic family and religion was an important influence in relation to both my family and my being educated in a Catholic school. We also live in a society where religion is an important dimension. One of the decisions that I had to make, as a parent, for example, was whether or not my own children should be baptised. And I decided, together with my wife, that they would be baptised. Because, despite what I said earlier, religion is not entirely a negative influence. It has a positive influence in terms of social behaviour. But the question of do you or don’t you believe in God is, basically, an intellectual question. And I don’t think that people who don’t believe are necessarily more free of influences, such as religion.

So, would you describe yourself as an atheist, an agnostic or what?

An agnostic. And I do have a great deal of respect for religion. I even attend Church from time to time, though often it has to do with family events or official events. I also respect other people’s religious convictions and think it is wrong to take the attitude that one is superior in some way because one doesn’t believe in God. And I do find terribly irritating the degree of intellectual superiority one encounters among people who are not religious. There is a disdain for people who are religious, as though those people are backward or shackled by some kind of theological relic, or whatever. That kind of intellectual arrogance is wrong.

And where do you stand on the issue of abortion?

I believe abortion is something about which the individual woman has to decide for herself. I support the right of women to make that choice themselves, in consultation with medical advisors and whatever counsellors they have available to them. But I think it is a very personal and very private decision that a woman has to make. But I am concerned about the scale of abortion among Irish women. We now have 5,000-6,000 women per year who are having abortions and that is an extremely high figure. And for all the cant about abortion here and pretending that we can legislate it out of existence, we have one of the highest rates of abortion in Europe. And one thing we must do is reduce that figure.

How would you propose to do that?

It’s not going to be reduced by legislating it out of existence or pretending it doesn’t exist or by proclaiming against it. We have to establish why so many Irish women have abortions and identify what can be done to bring down those figures. We really have got to approach the abortion problem in Ireland more from a human point of view than from the fundamentalist attitude that has been taken to it up to now.

Do you think that an individual woman should have the right to choose to have an abortion in her own country, rather than add to that endless stream of women boarding the mail boat at Dun Laoghaire, or Dublin Airport, or wherever?

I think if she had that option, the number of abortions would reduce considerably. A woman makes the decision to have an abortion and it does involve travelling out of the country in a way in which, when she gets on the plane, or the boat in Dun Laoghaire, she’s then committed to seeing that journey through. It’s almost like a nightmare she must go through. So, my feeling is if Irish women could have abortions in their own country they might reconsider and not go ahead with it all.

Following the post X-case referendum, the Government gave its commitment to legislating for access to information and still hasn’t. Is there anything you can do immediately to speed up this process? 6,000 a year is roughly 20 women a day, so this obviously is something that’s happening as we speak, while the Government basically sits on its ass over the issue.

This Government is in office for two months and I definitely hope we won’t have to wait too long before the Government acts on the abortion information issue.

On Prime Time last night Bertie Ahern was warned by those elements in Fianna Fáil that he wouldn’t want to rush to embrace the “liberal agenda”, including the divorce issue or he’ll risk being shafted. If Fianna Fáil goes back on its commitment to supporting divorce legislation, might that not lead to the failure of the forthcoming divorce referendum?

The Government has committed itself to having a divorce referendum this year and that will happen. And we want it to succeed because it would be totally unacceptable if the divorce referendum were defeated again. But, yes, I am concerned about what position Fianna Fail will take, because since going into opposition it seems to me that the only policy, they have is to get back into power at any cost. And, in pursuit of that policy they have adopted the kind of collective amnesia which would lead you to believe they haven’t been in Government for the past seven years and, indeed, in the Government that has been leading this country for the bulk of its time since its independence. In this context it would not surprise me if Fianna Fáil were to take an opportunist position on the divorce referendum and if they were to take that position they could cause the defeat of the referendum.

Are you saying that this is a real likelihood?

The political future of this country does not lie in opposing measures like divorce. If Fianna Fáil take that opportunist line on the divorce referendum and cause its defeat again, as they did the last time, then as a party they are finished. Publicly, last time their position was ‘officially, say nothing’ while privately telling people on the ground to vote against it. And their opposition the last time had as much to do with embarrassing the then Government as it had to do with their true position on it. Primarily, the last time, what Fianna Fáil were trying to do was inflict a political embarrassment on Garret Fitzgerald and his Government. That’s because Fianna Fáil have no principles of any kind. The only policy Fianna Fáil has is to be in power. The only thing that matters to Fianna Fáil in opposition is the question ‘will it serve to get this other crowd out?’ And they need power like you and I need oxygen. It’s what keeps them going and what feeds the whole system of patronage that is now the essence of today’s Fianna Fáil. And therefore Fianna Fáil, in opposition are capable of taking an opportunist position on anything – from divorce to the football riots in Landsdowne Road to Northern Ireland. Yet one hopes if they adopt that position in relation to divorce this time then the electorate will punish them for it.

Charlie McCreevy once described his fellow TD’s – including Fianna Fail TDs, one presumes – as “hypocrites” in the sense that some stand up in Leinster House espousing ‘family values’ while being what he called ‘whoremasters’ behind the scenes. Do you agree with that?

In fairness I don’t think this idea of family values is being sold in Leinster House any more. That pressure comes from groups outside Leinster House and, indeed, outside of the mainstream of the Church itself – as in the self-proclaimed fundamentalist groups who have arrogated to themselves the idea that they are for family values. Such as the pro-life campaigners and family solidarity types. But I find in Leinster House, right across the political divide, there is a great understanding of how humanity operates!

One remembers how the right-wing element tried to nail Bertie Ahern because he is separated from his wife and is involved in at least one other known relationship.

But they failed. And I’m glad they failed. Where that idea of highlighting the sexual habits of politicians has really been promoted is in the gutter press in Britain. And there was some attempt by the gutter press to turn that table on Bertie Ahern and it didn’t work. And it would be a very sad day for this country if it did work. But I would have to say that there was a time, in this country, when you would get the hypocrisy factor in politics. In other words you would get the politician proclaiming family values, and being pictured on the back of the election literature in the ‘happy, family photograph’ then doing God only knows what behind the scenes. My problem isn’t with the ‘God only knows what’, it’s with people pretending they have some kind of superior standard in terms of moral behaviour when, in truth, they are no better than anyone else.

Have you ever visited a brothel?

No.

Why?

Never had to pay for it, and I hope I don’t have to! I still fancy my chances in the open field.

But you’re not in the ‘open field’ are you? You’re married!

I am, yeah.

Did you ever do drugs?

No.

Not even as part of your student days in the 70s?

I smoked, and I inhaled! But, beyond that, no. It never did anything for me.

Where do you stand in relation to the issue of legalising drugs like cannabis? And even heroin, to take it out of the area of criminality, perhaps?

I think that would be sending out the wrong signals. The problem is really with hard drugs and it has to be tackled on a number of levels. There is an educational, a health and policing dimension to it all. There’s also a social dimension to it, which demands that we look specifically at what attracts young people, particularly from poor circumstances, to get into drugs. And this comes back to what this Government is trying to do, in terms of trying to get people back to work. The worst drugs problems are in those ‘black spots’ in our society where there is high unemployment. Apart from tackling this sub-culture, we also have to get at the source of the drugs, weed out those who are peddling, and deal with them with the full force of the law.

But, isn’t that basically a long-term approach which may or may not work and which does nothing to ease the problems growing by the minute here in working class areas of Dublin city in relation to heroin abuse? Shouldn’t the Government have a set of measures it can push through immediately to tackle the problem rather than sit and wait while more people get hooked on heroin and die?

The Government is working on it as we speak. But it’s not a problem that there is a quick-fix solution to. You have to approach it from the angles I mention and, in particular, try to cut off the supply of drugs into this country. That could be a first step.

So what, specifically are you going to do in relation to that first step, as Minister with responsibility for the Marine? This is your area. Surely the stories that ships are getting drugs supplies into this country, undetected and undisturbed, turns the idea of our Government “policing” the coastline into a bit of a joke? What have we got? Two ships watching the whole coastline?

You must remember that there is two thousand miles of coastline. But, yes, something more is going to have to be done in this area, and will be. But even if you erect a fence around Ireland, you would still have drugs coming in. There are something like 900 places on our coastline which can be used as ports of one kind or another. So this is a huge problem. It doesn’t matter whether the Provos or major gangs are involved in bringing in these drugs, the supply is something that has to be dealt with. Certainly, police who have been released from whatever duties they had in relation to the threat posed by terrorism now can and must be redeployed into dealing with the threat posed by drug dealing. That will be one of the dividends of the peace process, particularly in relation to police who worked in intelligence.

During a television documentary last year Irish police claimed they came up against a brick wall when trying to investigate the identities of those who had perpetrated the Dublin-Monaghan bombings of 1974 which killed, among others, the daughter of one of your constituents in Sallynoggin and a childhood friend of mine, Anna Massey. That documentary suggested that elements of British Intelligence were involved in those bombings and you then called for the case to be further investigated. What has happened since?

The former Minister for Justice, Maire Geoghan-Quinn, undertook that she would make investigations about it and never made a report on what those investigations showed. I understand that the present Minister for Justice is looking at that now and I’m hopeful she will produce more than was produced by the previous Government.

How do you deal with the pain, and frustration of families who have waited nearly 21 years for a legitimate explanation of what happened that day and ask who, exactly was involved in the bombing of Dublin and Monaghan?

How can I? I think the families have every reason to be frustrated about it and to feel very bitter about it, as some obviously are. In the entire history of the troubles, it was the biggest single massacre, North or South and to some extent it has been underplayed. In other words, it was deliberately forgotten about. And, while I’d keep an open mind about the accuracy of the suggestion that there was British Secret Service involvement in the bombing, there does seem to be no doubt that the investigation undertaken by the Gardai on this side of the border was snuffed out when it got north of the border. Now, one of the things that has always puzzled me about this is why, if the Gardai did meet a brick wall in Belfast and couldn’t gain access to the suspects they wanted to interview, why didn’t they look for some kind of political assistance with that problem?

How do you know they didn’t, and weren’t blocked by the Irish Government, for whatever reason?

Well, if it did happen nothing was done on it. And the Minister at the time – Paddy Cooney, I think – claimed he couldn’t remember being approached. But the two allegations, about who was involved and why the investigation ran to ground, are serious issues and the truth must be discovered about it all. In fairness to the families. Their grieving has not stopped and cannot stop until they know what happened. But I already have been in touch with the Minister for Justice about this and hope she will do as much as she can to help these families, and to find out the truth of what happened and make it public.

You have promised that this Government will take “effective action” in relation to Sellafield. What does this mean – that the Irish Government will finally take Britain to the European Courts over this issue. Can you, now, promise that will happen?

I can’t promise that will happen because we have to be satisfied that there is a sound enough legal case. The advice in the past was that there wasn’t a strong enough case.

The advice from who?

The Attorney General’s office.

But can you believe that? The Greens have always argued that there is a strong enough case.

We’re going to re-examine it. We set out in the Programme for Government a number of steps we’re going to take on the Sellafield issue. We’re going to move Irish Government action away from the kind of proclamations and declarations that have been made about it in the past, into specific actions we are going to take at an international level in order to have the reprocessing stopped.

Such as?

What we can do about the movement of ships, which is my particular area. One of the concerns we have is the movement of ships containing nuclear waste, through the Irish sea. And the movement of plutonium out from Sellafield. Other departments will be dealing with the Paris Convention, for example, because we regard Britain to be in breach of that Convention. And action on that is a form of legal action. There also will be diplomatic pressure exerted in relation to countries who have contracts with Sellafield. Steps such as these will amount to a concerted Government approach on the Sellafield issue. And if they work, Sellafield could be closed by the turn of the century, though there is the obvious problem of what will happen to the 15,000 people currently working there. You can’t just go over, turn off the lights and tell them they’re out of a job. So it will be a lengthy and complicated process.

There has been the suggestion that, as part of the Downing Street Declaration, there was a commitment given to the British Government, by the Irish Government, saying we basically won’t push the Sellafield issue in return for certain commitments from them in relation to Northern Ireland.

Yes, there is the rumour that the Irish Government is pulling back on Sellafield because it doesn’t want to upset the British at a delicate time such as this. But whether that rumour is true or false, this Government has no intention of pulling its punches over Sellafield. We regard it as a separate issue entirely from the Anglo-Irish Process. And this issue has always been of central importance to me because I am personally convinced that the danger from Sellafield is the greatest single threat to our health and safety, on this island.

If you were leader of the Democratic Left, or Taoiseach, you probably could get more done on this, and many issues. Is leading Democratic Left, or the country, your ultimate goal as a politician?

No. My ultimate political goal – ironically – is to get out of politics! I’d like to do a good job for a number of years, then get out. Because the day is long gone when you can look on politics as a life-long career. If you’re too long at it you suffer from burn-out and are no use to anyone that way. Secondly, if you look at what is happening electorally, the public want a turnover of politicians. So I don’t see myself as being in politics for forever and a day, though I do want to do a good job and am very glad to have gotten the opportunity to serve in Government. It came quite unexpectedly and I imagine I’ll have two to two and a half years in this department and then, ideally, personally look beyond politics. Obviously I’ll contest the next elections but after that, who knows? I’ll probably move on to something else.

As in become a priest?

No. I was thinking more about moving in the other direction! Maybe I’ll become a ‘whoremaster’!