: Shane Kenny
: Under the Rainbow Inside John Bruton's Coalition Government
: Gill Books
: 9781804581872
: 1
: CHF 21.70
:
: Politikwissenschaft
: English
: 400
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
The 'Rainbow Government', that was how the media described the Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left coalition government that John Bruton led from late 1994 to June 1997, arguably the most left wing government in the history of the state. In Under the Rainbow, Shane Kenny uses his unique perspective as government press secretary to deliver the ultimate insider account of this crucial juncture in Irish politics; a period which contained critical breakthroughs in the Northern Ireland peace process, the most high profile murder in the history of the state (Veronica Guerin), the establishment of the 'payments to politicians' tribunal, which finally exposed the sources of Charles Haughey's wealth, and a divorce referendum which heralded the dawn of a changing Ireland. With anecdotes and quotations from the author's own notes and tapes from the time, Under the Rainbow is a singular chronicle of political and economic achievement, aligned with professional and personal tragedy - a captivating mix of the atmosphere and facts of government life.

Shane Kenny is an Irish journalist and broadcaster who launched and was the first editor of Morning Ireland. He was also a long-term anchor on News at One and This Week. In television, he was an investigative journalist for the legendary 7 Days programme. He was press secretary to the 1994-7 Rainbow coalition government and subsequently set up his own media consultancy company, while also taking on the role of director of public affairs at Dublin City University.

2


A BUDGET SPRINGING LEAKS


A WEEK OR SO BEFORE the budget was announced, the papers carried copious stories with highly accurate information. It didn’t come through the press secretary’s office. There was nothing new in this, however. In recent years, extensive budget leaks before the day had become almost normal. Pretty well all the main changes were public knowledge 24 hours before the presentation of the budget statement by Ruairí Quinn, Minister for Finance. John Bruton was anxious. He called me from his car phone on the morning of the last cabinet meeting before the budget: ‘The government could be destabilised by all these leaks. What’s your assessment?’ I was deeply concerned. I had no idea where the stream of newspaper stories was coming from, and I told him so. But I was also able to tell him that I saw no sign of concern from Labour, and their man was in charge at finance. When I had spoken to John Foley about it the previous evening, he had said that everybody seemed to be comfortable with it. If Labour hadn’t had something to do with the leaks, all hell would be breaking loose. My predecessor, Seán Duignan, had warned me that Labour were ‘masterful’ at the art of leaking.

When I thought more deeply about this, there was a case to be made for ensuring that different measures in the budget got a good showing in the media, and that has become the norm, up to the present day. Otherwise, many items frequently get lost on budget day because the main news story from the speech dominates. It’s one thing to make a decision to reveal financial measures, obviously the case now, but we weren’t at that stage in 1995; the leaks were of information supposed to be budget secrets. Despite the opposition clamouring that the level of budget leaks was unprecedented, I expected that after the minister’s speech, analysis of the content would begin to dominate media coverage. However, on budget day the leaks story was to take an unexpected and explosive turn.

I was sitting in my office at about 12.15 p.m. on budget day, looking forward to handling a good news story for a change, when a devastating phone call arrived from Joe Lennon, then press officer in the Department of Finance: ‘I’ve just got a call from theEvening Press demanding a comment on a press statement they’ve just received from the minister of state at Finance, Phil Hogan, containing the key elements of the budget.’ Joe Lennon was clearly annoyed. I was deeply shocked. It didn’t matter that most of the information in Phil Hogan’s statement was already in the public domain – this was a very public breach of the principle of budget confidentiality by a Fine Gael junior minister, hours before the senior minister was due