Чарльз О'Нил Хауги: как программа 1987 года и социальное партнерство создали экономическое чудо Ирландии

Charles Haughey is increasingly, if grudgingly, credited with some achievements, such as in social policy or the International Financial Services Centre. But his overall economic strategy, which was realised through a singular system of social partnership, remains largely unknown. Ireland was transformed in the 1990s into an economy of what the National Economic and Social Council called “an almost entirely new population of enterprises”, as well as new social institutions. This Irish model, which has continued in its essentials to today, created a high-tech exporting base with a financial services framework, an industry/research nexus, and an EU orientation. It had as its dual goal a globally-integrated economy and socially inclusive society. Critical to it was social partnership, through which the major socio-economic interests collaborated with the state in developing and implementing its policies. The new economy proved so robust that the global financial crisis of 2008 to 2012 that destroyed much credit-based wealth failed to seriously dent it, and it quickly recovered to grow again. Anything and everything is said to have caused the so-called Irish miracle, from globalisation to the EU, older policies in areas like education coming to fruition, the visionary foresight of agencies like the IDA, an explosion of artistic creativity, or even just good luck. Anything, that is, apart from policies actually pursued just before it, with the precise aim to achieve it. The programmes agreed by Haughey with the social partners were described at the time by the hardly Haughey-friendly Irish Times as likely to be as transformative as Lemass’s. That they were is for then minister and later Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, indisputable. “All the strategic decisions and policy changes to achieve the economic take-off of the 1990s were put in place by that particular government of 1987-89,” he said. “The EU supports, globalisation, that all came after.” What is rarely understood is that for Haughey, the challenge was not just a then terrible debt and deficit, but what the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) saw as Ireland’s “fundamental problem” - structural underdevelopment. For him, the key was a stable macro-economic framework with, at its core, a transformative industrial policy. Haughey’s success was already acknowledged by 1989 by bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund. But the greatest tribute came in 1995 when his erstwhile adversary, Taoiseach John Bruton, who had ridiculed the strategy as delusional, admitted to his own “conversion” to what he called the “1987 programme”, including its social partnership aspect, which he had also previously derided. What is striking about Haughey is the consistency with which he advocated this strategy of state-enabled development and social partnership from first entering politics in the 1950s. Whenever in office, as minister or Taoiseach, he tried to advance it until finally, in 1987, he had the power and authority to do so. It was initially resisted by business circles still dependent on UK markets, and by many in the unions, but by 1990 all scepticism had evaporated. The stated goal of Irish accession to what was then the European Economic Community in 1973, and of Haughey’s social partnership programmes, was to achieve average EU living standards. Within fifteen years of 1987, the Irish workforce, long static at a million, had doubled, and living standards, which had been just 60 per cent of the EC average at accession, had soared above it. A Swedish study on how globalisation was deftly exploited by Ireland to boost growth in the 1990s found that the turnaround had already occurred in 1987 when “something had happened” to propel it. That something was the 1987 programme. Top civil servants of the day are in no doubt that this was the case, with one recalling how “in 1987 the ship had been steadied”, and had then “taken off” on the “firm foundations of that … particular programme of 1987”. Like many leaders that matter, Haughey was controversial, accused of being both venal and corrupt. The latter claim is serious because if true in its actual meaning, of trading political favours for money, nothing he said or did can be taken seriously. But this book shows it to be hollow and that, whatever his personal dealings, he was not politically corrupt and his policies must be assessed on their merits. A son-in-law and ally of Lemass, he saw Lemass’s achievement as to have identified the “techniques of modern nation-building,” of which it was his own task to realise its economic substance. This is what he then did. Philip O’Connor is author of ‘A Very Political Project: Charles Haughey, Social Partnership and Ireland’s Economic Transformation’ which is published by Howth Free Press