Interview by Brad Balfour with Gloria Starr Kins
Photos by Gloria Starr Kins

Many have claimed mastery of the Celtic Tiger, but if the beast's domestication is to be traced, the pedigree papers are to be found in the hands of one man, former Prime Minister (Taioseach in Gaelic) Albert Reynolds. Much of the work for today enormous financial and cultural success lies at the feet of such a leader as Reynolds. He made strategic and carefully wrought decisions that pay off handsomely in the present. His vision is bifocal through the dual lens of viewing both the personal and the political. From his many business ventures he learned the necessity of turning Ireland into an export economy. And in his role as communications minister, he initiated the decision to transform one of the world's most rickety phone systems into a state-of-the-art digital network by making the prescient call to go fiber optic.

With his brother's emigration from Ireland in the '50s Reynolds became convinced that his compatriots were the one national resource that the country couldn't afford to trade away. In one generation (the time frame of his own political activism) he ushered in the change from soil to software, urging the importation of fire's economic exiles and the exportation of their technical expertise.

From 1977 to 1992, Reynolds intermittently held ministerial positions from communications (Minister of Posts, Telegraphs and Transport: 1979-'81) to Energy ('82) and Industry and Commerce (1987-88). In '88 he became Finance Minister, and it took but four years for the Longford man to hold both the leadership of his party, Fianna Fail, and the Republic's principal portfolio.

His proudest accomplishment, next to being the happy father of seven children (five girls and two boys) is the tremendous and tireless efforts he put forth in establishing the peace process for Northern Ireland. As Taioseach Reynolds could finally unleash the potential of the Irish economy but first a greater beast had to be de-clawed; the man-eater found amidst the jungle of Northern Irish politics, the bull in his potential crystal palace.

It was on a crisp New York morning last spring over tea in Fitzpatrick's Hotel where I shook the hand of the man whose, to paraphrase William Blake, mmortal hand or eye" framed the Celtic Tiger's "fearful symmetry" with a design not just of green but of orange, too. Here was a politician who transformed the rhetoric of rebellion into peace and prosperity.--Brad Balfour/Nick Kennedy

What is thefocus of year time now?

Well, I'm involved more in business and less in politics, although some people describe me as being a roving ambassador for Ireland, telling the story as it developed over the years. I suppose the best way to give you a feel for it is that ever since I was elected to national politics (1977) I have been head of the poll for my constituency for every election since. In 1979, I was appointed to the Cabinet and given my first difficult job; to develop the Irish telecommunications system. Foreign investments were becoming very difficult to attract to Ireland, yet we relied heavily on them at that time. Our lack of communications with the outside world was the first major job. That whole department lacked modern management structures, systems, and not to mention, experience, so I brought my business know-how and experience. I made the decision to convert the infrastructure to digital even though most systems at that time were analog. Now that I look back I see that the decision was very visionary. I had a five-year program on how to develop it and formed a good partnership with the unions and set out from there to at least make or hopefully exceed our targets. That decision, together with the Irish Government's earlier decision to invest heavily in education, combined to give us a good foundation in which to laterally build the Celtic Tiger. Now we are able to attract people to communications and all the modern-type industries of the future.

Was it hard attracting people from traditional modes of employment to the computer and information technology industries?

The Republic traditionally wasn't an industrial nation and even by the late Seventies 38% of the workforce was engaged in agriculture. Today, that figure is down to 9%. Every year the best of our young people went abroad and contributed their skills to building up other economies. Eventually we knew we'd need them at home, which we now do.

What do you imagine is the biggest milestone in your career?

I saw the huge effect of digitalization as well as the opportunities it opened up to the Irish economy in finance and industry. We looked around the world for investments to draw in. Some of the early investments involved transferring the service industry, as in the areas of health and health insurance. Companies would send over claims from the United States to Ireland on the night flight, which would then be prepared by our young people and the results sent back through high-speed data lines to the States within 24-36 hours. It created a huge cut in costs for the Americans which made it very attractive for the health care industry. You comefrom an entrepreneurial family.

My father was a coach builder. We had a small dance hall, the Ballroom of Romance, which my brother and I ran when he returned from Australia. Then we started to build ballrooms across the country. These did very well as there were no boy-meets-girl situations and their construction spread throughout rural Ireland. I feel this was the first step to social freedom for young people. Moreover, if you consider the upsurge of the ballroom and such early forms of community entertainment (there were 25,000 people employed in that field in the '70s) it is obvious that out of this provides a springboard for not just the country's traditional musicians but the U2s of the world.

How do you sell the current needfor entrepreneurs?

At the Ministry of Industry and Commerce we had to build a whole package for selling Ireland as the land of opportunity. Your bottom line results are commercially better in Ireland than anyplace else in the world. We also changed our whole focus and outlook on education. Classical academia dominated and was entrenched in the universities. We had to build a third level infrastructure in education which competed with traditional academia. Regional Technical Colleges became degree granting Institutes of Technology. Basically we tried to match the skills of the young people who were coming out with existing opportunities. We were producing students who were trained for the industry of the future, not of the past.

When you had the post of Minister for Industry and Commerce how was Ireland's economic climate?

Back in government in 1987 we had to take out the cleaver and cut off the fat to make the hish economy a slim one which didn't need much tax revenue. We were a bad risk and almost on the brink of international bankruptcy. There were cutbacks everywhere right across the board; including education and health care for we had to make the contribution to development. There were sectors of the economy lending themselves to this, especially in my area of industrial development. We had a natural gas find in County Cork then built a pipeline to Dublin. We put together a national distribution network for gas which took feed lines off the pipeline to otherparts of the country, resulting in a new energy find to use for the economy. We have a clean environment, a green image of a fresh country-a good marketing tool. We moved away from specifically concentrating on agricultural production and more towards industrialization. We created a new software development industry in 1987 and weare now the European leaders in the exportation of software products. We bypassed the old ways and went from an agrarian society to a software society. There are 250 international financial companies in Ireland who have no reason to be there other than to export their services. Let's keep our young people at home and export their resources and man power through computer systems and their components: pharmaceuticals and technology.

As Minister for Finance, what was your biggest challenge?

At the end of 1988, I looked at the servicing of our national debt that had been a huge burden on us. I set up a commercially based agency and took it away from Civil Service and the Exchequer to manage our national debt. It was a new innovation for Europe and probably for the world-a number of countries have followed it since. It has been extremely successful and saves the servicing of the debt about 250 million pounds a year-a tremendous amount for an economy as small as ours. I didn't agree with the high taxes that were being put on and started a process of reducing personal taxes and a more entrepreneurial approach toward capital taxes to keep the money moving. We gave people more opportunity and incentive to work instead of the heavy hand of the government taking it and not managing peoples' money. We moved away from state control to a combination of private and public. This was comparable to managing a big corporation and looking at all the various departments: roads, transport, education, etc. Finance gave me the first opportunity to move the money to where we wanted to spend it.

Was it at this point where you were preparing to be Taoiseach?

Yes, it developed in Finance. Europe was looking for expansion from the original countries (EU) and I looked at how they could help support and influence what we were doing in Ireland and how we could expand the market to attain the objectives of the Treaty of Pome.

What Europe had to look at was how to bring poor countries up to the level of developed countries. Four countries with the qualifying criteria were Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

They set aside structured funding for the priority regions and our first injection of those funds was about 3.2 or 3.3 billion pounds for a three- or four-year period. When I became Prime Minister in 1992 I got my second opportunity. At that stage there was a heavy push to expand Europe, especially from Germany and France (subsequent to the fall of the Berlin Wall) to develop Central Europe because it would be a big consumer and trade break for them. I had a private meeting with Chancellor Kohl who told me the funds would expand and I received approval on an 8 billion pound grant that did not have to be paid back. By reduction of overhead and injection of funds we had a whple new approach to national development. In 1987 we set forward the national development plan based on social partnership between congress, employers and farmers. Government input was a reduction of taxes reflecting our commitment to the whole part of our intemational plan and a specific wage below inflation. Interest rates were at an all-time high. We couldn't borrow money, everything was gridlocked. The grant gave us the money to develop the economy.

When you become Taoiseach what was at the forefront of your agenda?

In 1992 I had two goals. to try to bring peace to Ireland because a bad message was going out of bullets, bombs and violence and to develop the economy. I felt that the two issues were interrelated because if we could get peace in Ireland then we could project a different marketing message around the world. It was a failure of leadership to ignore it. We now had the economy sorted out and here was the big chance to make it all happen. I put my neck on the line for peace. Everyone said that it couldn't be done, that there was no solution. But I'd been told that with the communications and the industrial side there was a big chance to pull it all together and make it happen. Northern Ireland politics was a graveyard for all politicians who had tried to bring peace to Ireland. I decided to change the South's policy since everything we had tried for the past 30 years had failed because people who were part of the problem weren't previously invited to become part of the solution.

How was the Peace Process initiated?

I went to see John Major within days of being appointed. We developed a very personal and trusting relationship, not like the normally antagonistic relationship that existed between previous government leaders. I think that one of the major breakthroughs was with Major himself after he called me up to congratulate me on my appointment and invited me to meet with him. We had a first meeting and I was told (by those who had been at both types of meetings) that it was totally different from any of the others that had formerly taken place. John said "Put away the pen, we're just going to have a chat. We have a problem and we have to figure out what to do about it." We discussedjust about every intention that had ever been expressed but never been carried out, just broken promises. We agreed to work towards declaration by both governments, recognizing the mistakes of the past on both sides and how we would go on in the future. We made the Downing Street Declaration, a charter for peace in Ireland, and published it on December 15, 1993. It set out principles by which we could all go forward, from the strong Republican side, to the Nationalist, to the Unionists and their various strands of Unionism. Basically what we tried to do with the Declaration was to charter a path forward for everyone, a democratic path that could be demonstrated to work and get results for their political viewpoints, without using violence.

What is now possible?

To implement the Good Friday Agreement. The mistake or false perception being projected is that the IRA or Sinn Fein broke their word by not doing what was in the Agreement that George Mitchell put together. They didn't break their word because that time was never in the agreement. The reality was that all sides would use their best endeavors to bring peace by May of this year. The biggest single mistake was to allow David Trimble to announce that he'd have to complete decommissioning by a certain date or he would have to resign. He took away the mandate given to the international commission who had the responsibility under the agreement to handle decommissioning and pronounce whether or when it was started or not. So you had a return to the old dominance of Unionist leadership saying we have to decommission. He wasn't entitled under international law to do that.

Where does a government get the authority to undermine and destroy an agreement that was overwhelmingly endorsed by the people?

The Celtic Tiger is ultimately the harbinger of peace because without the economic engine nothing will change. The proper bridge to build between North and South is the economic bridge. We were asking Northern Ireland to accept a lower standard of living than they were getting from Britain. But now we have come full circle. Last year was the first year in our history that income in the Republic per capita was higher than the North. My total confidence now in the peace process rests on the younger generation who do notwant to continue their forefathers' war because they now have a taste of peace and there's no way they want to go back to the old, stale ideas.

Do you think the US can do anything else? The US has done its best, it's now up to us. Are you frustrated you could not do more?

I am not in the business of laying blame on this or the other. It just happened. That's for those there to finish the job that was started. If there was no job started then there would be no job to be finished. The people will absolutely make it happen.

I am confident that the peace process will go forward in the near future because the people do not want it to go backwards.

We will have peace.