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| Brian Lenihan |
Brian Lenihan, who steered Ireland through its worst economic crisis as finance minister while battling pancreatic cancer, died at home yesterday, his family said. He was 52.
Hailed for his patriotism and fortitude in combining one of the toughest jobs in Europe while undergoing treatment, Lenihan remained one of Ireland’s most popular politicians despite being forced to seek an EU-IMF bailout last year.
“This is a loss which will be shared by many people across the political spectrum in Europe who had the honour of knowing Brian Lenihan as a politician and as a person,” Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, told Irish radio station Newstalk.
“His legacy will be that one can place one’s duty to the nation above one’s personal difficulties as Brian did and that’s a great example of public service.”
A lawyer by training, Lenihan took over as finance minister in May 2008 just as the wheels were coming off Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy.
Months into the job and with Ireland’s banking system teetering on the brink of collapse due to a global credit crunch, Lenihan guaranteed the sector’s liabilities, a fateful move as the scale of the lenders’ property losses emerged.
Initially praised for tackling Ireland’s budget deficit through harsh cutbacks and tax increases, Lenhian faced an investor backlash when Greece’s crisis exploded in May 2009.
As the debt markets shunned Irish debt, the recession deepened, the deficit ballooned and the banks’ loan losses headed into the tens of billions, Lenihan was forced to relinquish Ireland’s economic sovereignty and seek an 85bn euros EU-IMF bailout.
He spoke movingly of that decision. “I have a very vivid memory of going to Brussels on the final Monday and being on my own at the airport and looking at the snow gradually thawing and thinking to myself: this is terrible,” Lenihan said in a BBC interview this year.
“No Irish minister has ever had to do this before. Now hell was at the gates.”
Despite delivering four austerity budgets in his less than three years in the job and being criticised for repeatedly reassuring people the worst was over, Lenihan’s good nature and sense of fun endeared him to colleagues, opponents and voters.
Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2009, he never missed a cabinet meeting and combined chemotherapy with long days on the job.
Once seen as a contender to head the Fianna Fail party, his ill health and his legacy as finance minister meant he failed in a leadership vote prior to a national election.
Voters repaid his efforts at the polls in February when he was the only member of the party returned to parliament in a Dublin seat.
“In different circumstances, if he hadn’t been so unlucky, he could possibly have been Taoiseach (prime minister) but he was unlucky,” his successor, Finance Minister Michael Noonan, told Irish state broadcaster RTE.
“He coped in a way that very few of us could have coped with such a serious illness. There was no self-pity. There were no excuses ... it was an amazing performance.”
A scion of one of Ireland’s most famous political dynasties, Lenihan’s father was a former deputy prime minister and one-time presidential candidate. His aunt and brother served in parliament until electoral defeat in February.
Lenihan attended Belvedere college, James Joyce’s alma mater, and then studied law at Trinity College Dublin and Cambridge University.
He is survived by his wife, a son and daughter.