EMU’s new architect

Date: 12/09/1996

RUAIRI Quinn is a fortunate man. When he chairs a meeting of the EU's finance ministers, he can survey all around him with an air of superiority. While his French and German colleagues find themselves knee-deep in economic problems, as Ireland's finance minister Quinn is sitting on the back of a Celtic tiger.

Gone are the days of high inflation, crippling public debt and a relentless round of strikes. Instead, Ireland has become a text book lesson in the new economics.

Inflation has been licked and the government's budget deficit is well within the 3&percent; target required by the Maastricht Treaty if Ireland is to enter the 'promised land' of the Euro.

Most impressive of all, the mountain of public debt amassed by a string of coalition governments has been steadily eroded by year after year of budget-trimming.

Ireland's record of hacking its debt down from 115&percent; of national income in the late Eighties to 80&percent; and falling has been unmatched in recent European history, and yet this fiscal stringency has gone hand-in-hand with fantastic rates of economic growth (8&percent; last year).

Quinn, who will host an informal gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors in Dublin Castle on 21 September, has something to teach his colleagues: orthodox economics really can make you happy.

Who would have believed it? Certainly not the Ruairi Quinn who studied architecture at University College Dublin in the late Sixties. The hard-left Socialist whose views earned him the nickname Ho Chi Quinn would have been amazed at the sight of the elegant 50-year-old minister sitting behind his desk at the department of finance.

It is a road that many student activists have travelled, although Quinn's assumption of the mantle of fiscal conservatism has been less shame-faced than that of some of his political soul mates.

On taking the reins in 1994 as the first Labour Party finance minister in the history of the Irish Republic, Quinn quashed any suggestion that Santa Claus was coming to town.

“I am conscious that the money for which I have responsibility is taxpayers' money taken from them painfully on many occasions. All of the money that is taken from taxpayers will be spent as efficiently and effectively as possible,” he said.

Quinn had the good fortune to take on the job when the Irish economy was growing so quickly that spending cuts could be a lot less ruthless than those made by some of his hated predecessors.

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that he is not the most popular member of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition - particularly within his own party, where many activists still believe in Keynesian-style pump-priming.

Quinn does not. He regards himself as a continental European Socialist, keen to foster the best of the market economy while rooting out the worst of capitalist excess.

Hence his political hero is former European Commission President Jacques Delors who, as French finance minister, called time on President François Mitterrand's Socialist experiment in the early Eighties.

Behind Quinn's political development was his proximity to business. One of his brothers - Lochlann - is the number two at one of the world's leading small appliance companies, Glen Dimplex, while another - Conor - is joint managing director of advertising agency Quinn McDonald Pattison (QMP).

The finance minister's closeness to Conor was called into question last year after QMP won the government contract to campaign in favour of legalising divorce - a cause close to Ruairi's heart.

Quinn revealed long ago that he had separated from his first wife and wanted the opportunity to remarry. He did so in 1990 outside Irish jurisdiction, but took a vociferous lead in the campaign to end what he considered anachronistic and unfair laws.

“The reality is that there is not a family in Ireland that is not affected by marital breakdown,” he told a newspaper a decade ago.

Quinn's temper can be short. During last year's divorce referendum, he was asked to acknowledge that Professor William Binchy, the leader of the No campaign, was a clever man. Yes, he said, “but so was Hitler”. He had to make a public apology.

Quinn does not lose his temper often but he can be impatient, according to those who have worked with him.

“He does not suffer fools,” says one. “He is very business-like. Some ministers breeze into a room at the beginning of a meeting and talk about the weather or a football game last night, but you will not get any of that with him. It is straight to business.”

Quinn is quite unlike his predecessor in the Irish finance ministry, Bertie Ahern, now the leader of the Fianna Fáil opposition. When written advice from his civil servants landed on Ahern's desk, he would make clear that he had read it by writing “noted” at the bottom of the sheet. Quinn is more likely to add a paragraph of comments or supplementary questions, asking his staff whether they have thought of X or Y.

Keen to keep up with the latest news, particularly developments in the financial markets, Quinn has had a Reuters screen installed in his office.

He has also taken a zealous interest in the internal reform of the department of finance. Following a damning report two years ago from consultants Price Waterhouse into the internal structure of the department, Quinn oversaw a series of management reforms aimed at improving communication between the different specialist units.

As one might expect of such a hands-on operator, Quinn is an effective and tough chairman. “He likes to run to time, that is for sure,” says a colleague. Ecofin ministers watch out.

Last week, he gave central bank governors a taste of what they should expect in Dublin when, in his role as president of Ecofin, he took up the standing invitation to sit in on the monthly meeting of the council of the European Monetary Institute in Frankfurt.

There is an unwritten rule among the assembled central bankers that Ecofin presidents should, like Victorian children, be seen but not heard. Interventions should be kept to a minimum.

Instead, when Quinn had something to say, he said it.

He is rarely lost for words when it comes to European issues. “He is very engaged,” says an official. “You can tell he really likes what he is doing and EMU, in particular, really interests him.”

Quinn is no Little Irelander. An avid reader of Le Monde, he speaks French and Greek, having spent a year as a graduate researcher in architecture in Athens.

When asked how he would like to be remembered, he replied: “As a gentle person with a strong personality who helped to change Ireland from being an impoverished confessional state to become a wealthy, compassionate and egalitarian republic within an ever stronger European Union.”

For this reason, Quinn is determined that Ireland should get into the single currency bloc in 1999 along with the most advanced member states.

“Ireland has demonstrated its capacity to qualify and it is our intention to ensure that we will qualify,” he said recently, making it clear that applied whatever happened to Ireland's biggest single trade partner, the UK.

Apart from getting Ireland in shape for EMU, Quinn's main task before Christmas will be to broker deals among finance ministers on how to ensure budgetary discipline in a monetary union and prevent competitive devaluations by EU countries left outside the Euro-bloc.

It will take every ounce of his political skill to make sure that Dublin is the place where the rule-book for monetary union is drawn up.