Head over to our T
More people from business needed in the Dail?
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Green Party, Progressive Democrats 
Back in March of 2007 I queried the professional backgrounds of the then FF/PD cabinet with respect to their experience of the realities of making things and what could be termed the productive sector of the economy. Batt O’Keeffe appears to have revived interest in the topic in recent days by suggesting that we need more people that are in his view business people, “farmers,managers and auctioneers”, in the Dail. So taking his key how does the new Cabinet measure up?
Taoiseach Brian Cowen – A local small town solicitor.
Mary Harney – was very briefly a secondary school teacher between her graduation in 1976 and her appointment to the Seanad by Jack Lynch in 1977.
Mary Coughlan - Very briefly worked as a social worker after college before taking her seat in a bye election.
Brian Lenihan – a barrister who was a lecturer in TCD and practised as a barrister before becoming a TD.
Brendan Smith – Oddly enough it appears he is the most professionally immersed in politics even while outside of elected politics as for a decade and a half he worked as special advisor to the Fianna Fáil TD and former Tánaiste John Wilson before becoming a TD.
John Gormley – Prior to entering full-time politics he ran an academy of European languages. So he was certainly in business though it was more the services end of things rather than what I’d term ‘making stuff’. Still it is a positive tick in his column.
Eamon Ryan – As far as I know he has run a couple of businesses involving the holiday trade and cycling. Another positive tick.
Bartholomew “Batt” O’Keeffe - Batt was a lecturer in CIT so I reckon that doesn’t count as a business background. Not sure what he lectured in but since it was a BA he got in UCC, I’m inclined to doubt that it was anything too technical or perhaps even all that practical either.
Dermot Ahern - A local solicitor
Noel Dempsey – A career guidance teacher
Mary Hanafin – A secondary school teacher
Micheál Martin – A secondary school teacher.
Martin Cullen – worked as a sales manager for a wine company. Seriously a wine company! He had at a point prior to that spent time in Zimbabwe or Rhodesia as it was then called seeking his fortune.
Willie O’Dea – O’Dea worked as a barrister and an accountant, and lectured at University College Dublin and the University of Limerick well it was still NIHE Limerick at the time he was there.
Éamon Ó Cuív – was manager of Gaeltacht Co-operative, a company involved in agricultural services including timber milling, tourism and cultural development. Apparently, this was very much a hands off role.
And finally while not a member of the cabinet but given his frequent appearances on the telly, his role in the Lisbon debate and his own belief in himself we should take a look at the FF main man from Wicklow.
Martin Cullen – worked as a sales manager for a wine company. Seriously a wine company!
What’s wrong with working for a wine company? The wine business in Ireland is worth about €500 million or so per annum, and with hundreds of different players in the market (importers, distributors, retailers, supermarkets, off-licences, etc.), it’s certainly competitive. And of course, it is 100% private sector.
Definite tick in his column, I’d say.
It was a sales position, he wasn’t making the wine. It is a classic middle man type role. I don’t view sales or marketing and the like as being all that productive but that’s just my view.
I think there’s a particular deal with the ex-teachers that they somehow get to keep part of the benefits of having been a teacher when they become a TD. I agree with GerryOS about Martin Cullen. At least Cullen has had to contemplate the prospect of insecure employment prospects. I suppose if you were thinking about an alternative Cabinet it would be nice to have Richard Bruton’s D. Phil. at the Department of Finance but of course the academic types don’t always make good politicians.
Again, thought it may not be clear here the intent of my original point was about the lack of people who make things and were involved directly in problem solving. In part my original post was about those people who aren’t much represented in politics at all, engineers and the like in contrast to those who appear to be over represented. I don’t regard sales people as having demonstrated the same skill set as people who create things. Of the newer definition from O’Keeffe ‘farmers,managers and auctioneers’ I’d regard farmers as having to be more solution orientated than auctioneers and depending on what they’re managing some managers. Some managers have to be fantastic adept problem solvers, others not so much.
I will agree totally that Cullen has worked in the private sector but it’s only a half tick in my view towards him having a background that lends itself to developing problem solving skills.
But look at that list again and tell me if we’ve got people with the skills orientated to solving original problems? I’m not claiming their all thick, just that their training is not suited to finding practical solutions.
I don’t view sales or marketing and the like as being all that productive but that’s just my view.
(I suppose I should declare an interest here, as I work in a sales role for a wine company.)
Making things is all fine and dandy, but if you can’t sell them, you’re not going to stay in business very long, are you? Winemakers tend not to handle the sales of their produce to the end consumer on export markets, and so it’s left to the “classic middle men”, as you term them, to do it. Sales produce revenue and profit, and of course tax in the form of VAT (and in the case of wine, excise duty.) Add in the ancillary economic activity generated (freight forwarding, warehousing, distribution, etc.) and you can see that the wine business generates a fair bit of good for the overall economy.
You give John Gormley and Eamonn Ryan credit for business interests that are no more tangible than Cullen’s. Neither of them were in businesses any more “productive” (by your criteria) than the wine business.
I was giving them (Gormley and Ryan) a positive tick not a full merit badge. Their businesses were intangible but in Ryan’s case for sure (and maybe Gormley’s too) it was his business. And you’re quite right that things need to be sold but without something to sell the sales role is defunct. I don’t think people from such a background should be barred from public life just that calls for more ‘business people’ as O’Keeffe terms them does not make much sense when it is the problem solving element we lack. A cabinet of small town solicitors and teachers is what we have for the most part.
Perhaps you can feel free to complete the series with a look at the FG “alternates” – or is your Blueshirt too died in the wool, Mr. Sullivan?
Here’s to start you off:
Enda Kenny – teacher (the horror, a public servant)
Richard Bruton – ‘research economist’
Alan Shatter – solicitor
Jimmy Deenihan – another teacher (and GAA All-Star)
Brian Hayes – teacher
Leo “Iron Man” Varadkar – doctor (i.e. public servant)
Billy Timmins – this TD’s son was an Army officer (yet another public servant)
Dennis Naughten – biologist
Damien English – partial accountant: “He further studied and part qualified with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants at the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Dublin Business School.”
Lucinda Creighton – a qualified Attorney at law for the state of New York
John Deasy – “manager of Public Affairs for multinational waste management company”. Lovely.
Back in March of 2007 I queried the professional backgrounds of the then FF/PD cabinet with respect to their experience of the realities of making things and what could be termed the productive sector of the economy.
And on a more serious note, I think that the sudden begging bowls appearing in the past week have exposed the Supermen of the ‘business community’ as having rather clay feet. Do we want such scoundrels running the government of this State?
EWI, frankly I’m more interested in banging the drum for another mob I belong to: engineers. I’ve said it before and I’m happy to say it again probably the best minister for education the state ever had was Donogh O’Malley. Sure he was a FFer but he was an engineer to boot and did more in his truncated time in office than some people achieve in their entire careers.
One way to square the circle would be to ask how many people with the “right” scientific qualifications are getting appointed to jobs where they can help. People can contribute without taking on a career in politics. But I fear that it’s all hacks in the appointed jobs as well. Just off the top of my head, it would probably help Dublin Port to have a few engineers at the top. But I doubt that was Bertie’s criteria when he was filling those jobs.
Horses for courses I would have thought? People with a background in business, engineering and science are notable by their absence from the ranks of parliamentarians in Ireland. (I think Labour’s Mary Upton is the only real scientist we have in the Dail and she came into national politics in the by-election following the death of her brother, Pat Upton, rather than as a natural choice of career for her.) You won’t find many artists either!
I think if you look at parliaments around the world you may find that lawyers, graduates of the humanities and so on, tend to predominate over scientists, engineers or businessmen and, generally speaking, it has always been so. The main function of our parliamentarians is to act as legislators and the skills involved in that – discussion of ideas, compromise, intensive media profiling – are not necessarily attractive to people of other casts of mind.
Politics is a fairly grubby little business at the best of times. Many’s the successful businessman who entered politics only to fall flat on his face at the first hurdle – the UK has yielded some splendid examples in recent years. All you have to do here is look at what’s being dished out to Declan Ganley of late. In any case, most scientists and business people I know would find active involvement in the politicial world just far too boring and unsatisfying as a career choice.
So I don’t think it matters very much what background people come from, whether they’re just ordinary backbenchers or members of the executive. It’s more important that when they are confronted with problems and decisions in areas they don’t know anything much about that they seek out the right advice from suitably qualified people. And of course, that they’re open to taking that advice on board. Unfortunately, many of them are far too vain to do that.
The reason is by and large teachers and self employed lawyers have plenty of free time or at least the ability to shape their free time. Enginners by and large work 9-5 and can’t take time off to go to council meetings etc. And thus can’t work their way up the chain. It is no FF/FG etc mass conscripcy against enginners. I have a science background and like politics and I barely have time any more to comment on this site let alone post on this site, let alone consider joining a party and running for election. You Dan are a rare breed.
Veronica, “the main function of our parliamentarians is to act as legislators and the skills involved in that – discussion of ideas, compromise, intensive media profiling – are not necessarily attractive to people of other casts of mind.” See there’s the real rub, that should be the main function of members of the Oireachtas but is it? And “discussion of ideas, compromise, intensive media profiling” barring the later, I think that other professions are very practised in the preceding list of abilities.
On the Labour side (just picking the last leaders & deputy leaders):
Eamon Gilmore – Trade Union official
Joan Burton – accountant & development worker
Ruairi Quinn – architect (partner in a very successful architectural firm)
Pat Rabbitte – Trade Union official
Liz McManus – architect
Personally, I’d like to see a lot more engineers, IT people and senior business managers in the Dáil, but very few of those jobs suit themselves to running for public office. Being a teacher, farmer or publican gives you the flexibility and hours to be a useful public rep.
Oh, and just for the record, Mary Upton is a Doctor of Agricultural Science, Dominic Hannigan is an engineer and Alan Kelly was an IT professional before becoming a Senator.
Dan, I would agree that we need more diversity in parliament. But I agree strongly with Veronica. Politics is grubby and many entrepreneurial types would get turned off. But there is another reason. I believe that talented people in many walks of life generally avoid politics because with politics do you really get to use your talents to the full? In politics you don’t necessarily progress because you can analyze problems, make strategy, or take decisions. You progress because you tell people what they want to hear, you progress because you press the right hands and kiss the right asses. So business people can exercise their talents better in, well business, than in politics, precisely because the two spheres are so different.
But Dan, I find your comment about the wine making an creating thinks a bit wide of the mark. Are you arguing that say a regional head of marketing for an exporting company knows less about business than a guy who makes furniture? How can that be so. Or that a head of sales doesn’t understand business as well as a block layer? Sales and marketing are not the whole story but I think you’ll agree there are many aspects to business.
I was about to make a response to various posts but Tomaltach got in ahead of me and his analysis of what it takes to progress in modern politics hits the nail on the head of what I wanted to say.
A couple of additional points: What they call the ‘personalisation’ of politics, or politicians as celebrities, seems to be here to stay in this era of diverse mass media.
In essence, today’s politicians are judged as much by how they look, how well they do in TV appearances, whether they’re gaining or losing weight etc. as they are for the substance of what they have to say. Some politicians appear to revel in the cult of political celebrity and are prepared to prostitute their own private lives, and those of their families to gain that extra bit of airtime or media attention.
That it trivialises important issues that affect real lives doesn’t seem to matter very much, either to the media or to many of the politicians who get caught up in this and ultimately may actually become addicted to constant self-projection as if they were play actors rather than representatives of the public.
By the way, I think I would reserve a distinction between politicians masquerading as celebrities and those once or twice a century figures who have such levels of natural charisma that they can carry masses of people with them and persuade them to their view, i.e. the natural leader types.
Then there is the uncomfortable fact that no matter how brilliant an individual may be in their chosen profession or career – and Dan, I meant no disrepect to engineers or other practical professionals in my previous comment – it doesn’t mean they’ll be any good as a politician. You have to want to be a politician and be prepared to do all that goes with it, including the spinning, sacrificing privacy, loss of time for normal family life plus all the other things that Tomaltach has pointed out above.
That I guess is why I think that the actual professional background of our politicians really isn’t all that important. It’s their motivation that really matters.
Politics is grubby and many entrepreneurial types would get turned off.
Yes, because everyone knows that businessmen are generally motivated by higher ideals than back-stabbing, threats, gougery, charlatanism, ego-tripping and just being all-round chancers.
/sarcasm
Ewi, You are right of course that in business, and most other walks of life, (including the Curia in the Vatican I’d almost lay a bet) there’s no shortage of “back-stabbing, threats, gougery, charlatanism, ego-tripping and just [being] all-round chancers.” In politics it’s the degree of it that’s somehow far more lethal.
Tomaltach, my original post was about the dearth of people with experience in creating and producing things, this post was revisiting that idea in the light of Batt O’Keeffe’s comments the emphasis on business is his not mine. So, I wasn’t seeking to argue “that a regional head of marketing for an exporting company knows less about business than a guy who makes furniture”. Apologies for the lack of clarity on my part. I might be inclined to suggest that the bloke making the furniture might (depends on how he is making it) might know a might more about taking something from idea to execution that the head of marketing might. And again it’s not about replacing all the current types involved in politics but widening the net. And I agree Veronica with the fact that it is motivation that should count for a lot, that said a well motivated carpenter isn’t that good in a medical emergency compared to a person with medical training. There’s politics the electoral game and then there are the roles of being in the executive or of having power. I repeat my mantra that the skills to get the job are not the skills to do the job, we select our politicians in a manner that would put one in mind of selecting 10,000m runners on the basis of their sprinting abilities over hurdles.
Dan, you appear to be saying that when it comes to the executive part of government ideally Ministers should have a background somehow related to the portfolios to which they are assigned. So you might have a medical doctor in Health; a person from a teaching background in charge of Education; an accountant or economist in Finance and a lawyer in Justice.
Apart from the fact that this negates the whole idea of representative democracy I have to point out that where, in the past, we have had persons who by virtue of their professional background might have seemed ideally suited to the particular Ministeries that they held, the results were sometimes quite unfortunate from the perspective of long term public policy and the broader interests of society. A man or woman in a powerful position a is much more complex animal than the professional qualifications, experience or expertise listed on their CV.
Within government departments there are more than enough public servants with expertise and considerable wealth of experience in every area to advise the political heads of Departments on the wisdom or otherwise of the policy options they are considering. And under our system, Ministers are also entitled to employ professional advisers to provide them with alternative perspectives from those of their civil and public service advisors; not to mention the rash of consultants – many of whom are excellent I hasten to add – who are so frequently engaged to produce independent reports and analysis of various policy options. If we were to take your argument to its logical conclusion we might dispense altogether with democracy and the election of representatives of the people and simply allow the elites of particular professions, backed up by a civil service administration, to decide policy and ensure its implementation. Then where would we be going? I don’t think we might end up in a very good place.
I agree with all the posters and your general point that it’s a pity there’s not a more diverse range of professional backgrounds represented both at government level and in the Dail and Seanad generally. It might do something for the quality of political debate, which is quite abysmal as I think we might all agree; but as to whether it might lead to better decisions being made, I’m not too sure about that.
Even very good politicians – and there are many of them about who are properly motivated to work in the best interests of society, exhibit sound judgement and be capable of taking on board the finer points of a brief as well as having the courage and capacity to change their minds when circumstances change and not make any apology for doing that – even they sometimes make stupid or wrong decisions. But then so do we all!
Veronica, I am 100% not saying “that when it comes to the executive part of government ideally Ministers should have a background somehow related to the portfolios to which they are assigned.” So I’m not going to respond to the rest of the post because it was not what I was saying at all. I’m not even sure how you could have gotten that impression.
Dan,
Maybe it was something to do with carpenters and medical emergencies and the skills to get the job not being the same as the skills required to do the job?
I made an assumpotion that if you take such statements at face value then members of a government or persons elected or nominated to positions of political power should have relvant background qualifications in respect of the decisions/ policies on which they are required to make a judgement and over which they have to power to determine outcomes that will affect the lives of masses of people.
All I’m saying is that I think background isn’t all that terribly relevant and unfortunately our own political history is replete with examples of people who on paper looked like they were the best qualified for a particular post and then turned out to be complete political dunderheads, or in token to vested interests, or arrogant beyond reason in their conviction of the rightness of their own positions irrespective of a growing body of evidence that demonstrated they were quite delusional.
Anyway, apologies if I misinterpreted your statement. Maybe what we should be talking about is what are the qualities that go to make up a good politician? Or can anyone even define what “a good politician” is?
The comment about the skills to get the job aren’t the skills to do the job is to do with the electoral process generally compared to the role of being a TD (or even a cllr come to think of it). I wouldn’t be looking for an exact matching of skills between ministers and departments, indeed there are good reasons to not wish to have teachers as minister for Education or doctors as ministers for Health, or members of the bar as minister for Justice. What I would prefer to see is that the skills base across the Oireachtas would be broad enough that ministers would have colleagues available to run stuff past. Oddly enough the panel system for the Seanad would seem to have been designed to provide this broader base of expertise but it has been subverted almost from the moment it came about. And I’d hold all parties accountable for that.
Take one example, Martin Cullen’s approval of the e-voting system. It would appear that neither he nor anyone close to him was competent enough to know what questions to ask or what answers to expect. And there was no one he could even informally check with.
I used the example of the cabinet as a quick and accessible means to highlight this lack of a broad base, though the cabinet actually under represents the publican class in the Oireachtas.
The e-voting debacle was avoidable if just a smidgen of common sense had been applied. The problem wasn’t so much Cullen’s background as his stupidity.
Since the Sindo doesn’t do pingbacks I’m going to add this one myself
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/loose-change-wont-cover-the-mortgage-1484540.html
Niall, I tend to agree with you. What was even more idiotic about E-voting was that it would cost nearly as much money on polling day as it was intended to saving at the count as you had to employ one person per voting machine. But we’ve done that to death at this stage, and yet it moves!
Ruairi Quinn was drawing attention more on Sunday on RTe by explicitly noting the fact that we have a senior counsel and solicitor in the top two roles neither of whom as he said it have business experience so it seems the idea is still in the ether at least.