The outgoing head of Northern Ireland's civil service is confident it will work with whatever political combination is presented, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
A HEALTH warning came with the opportunity to interview Gerry Loughran, outgoing head of Northern Ireland's civil service. He's developed a reputation as a highly capable but crusty individual for whom the phrase "doesn't suffer fools gladly" might have been coined.
He's both proud of and sensitive to the fact that he is the first Catholic to lead the North's 29,000 bureaucrats. "Don't leap in with the religious question," warned one of these officials. "If you have to work the Catholic angle, leave it till later in the interview."
Fair enough. Let's start with the Lagan. These days in Belfast one has a pleasant and greater sense of a city on the river. The Laganside regeneration, the Waterfront Hall, the huge Odyssey Centre, the riverside offices, apartments and pubs, the weir, the night-time illumination of the river and its bridges, all create the sense of a city on a rising tide.
Economic development has been Mr Loughran's main brief over his 37 years in the civil service. That notion of a revitalised city which Belfast is beginning to present to the world owes much to his work. It's his testament.
He's originally from Ardoyne, living a few streets from the home of Mary McAleese: they were and are friends. Both their parents ran public houses. The Loughrans owned the California Bar near the city centre which attracted dockers and people from the Markets.
"It was a great spot. What you learn behind the bar as a child, as a boy and then as a young man is very hard to replace," says Loughran.
"Growing up in a place like Ardoyne you learned how to look after yourself," he adds.
He remembers the civil rights period and the attacks on Catholic homes. "I was one of the people who stood on the street and watched the mobs advancing towards us. It wasn't a very comfortable time for anybody."
It might seem odd then that he should enter the Stormont civil service, which even until fairly recent years had a low representation of Catholics at senior level. There's a typical civil service caginess about Loughran, but he uses language to allow you read between the lines.
His early years in the civil service were "not an entirely happy experience", he says. But there were senior officials from the unionist side of the house such as George Quigley, businessman and former head of the Ulster Bank, who encouraged him to confront and surmount the challenges.
"There were people who were not nationalist or Catholic who had a tremendously idealistic view about what the civil service should be about, and how our society needed to change. George Quigley was one of them. People like that helped you through that period."
Loughran remembers the Belfast of the 1970s "when the bombs were going off right, left and centre". Belfast and Derry and other urban centres were terribly damaged by IRA bombs and economic blight. Officials such as Loughran and politicians such as Richard Needham - another strong-willed character - led the infrastructural fightback in the 1980s, backed up by public and private money.
He became indirectly embroiled in controversy in 1997 when the late economy minister, Baroness Jean Denton, said Loughran had advised her to "pack her bags" during a sectarian harassment case at her office. As a civil servant Loughran then as now would make no comment on the issue, but there is a feeling that but for the row he would have been civil service chief earlier.
Was this the case? "You may say that, but I could not possibly comment," he says, again inviting one to read between the lines.
He reluctantly touches on the fact that when he was appointed head of the civil service two years ago he was the first to hold that post. He agrees there was a "chill factor" against Catholics but points out that "in recent years the environment has changed to the extent that now we have to say in recruitment advertisements that applications from Protestants are welcomed."
As we finally arrive at the Catholic issue he says his politics and his religion are private matters, but again he provides an oblique insight into his deeper self. He's a Catholic at Stormont Castle, but it would be a foolish person who might try to pejoratively juggle the key words here.
He must be one of the very few such senior British civil servants not to be knighted. "I think it is perfectly obvious, my position on those things. There are no letters after my name.
"I don't put a political label on myself because I offer political advice to the DUP and to Sinn Féin as well as to the SDLP and Ulster Unionists. But I am typical of my community, if I can put it that way," he adds.
"My interests, my inclinations, my aspirations probably would not be very much different from the vast majority of Catholics. But that's my private life, and even after I retire I will not get involved in that sort of stuff because there are senior civil servants coming after me, and it is very important that the community can see the civil service as a neutral environment that guarantees professionalism. All that belongs to another part of my life."
Neither will he predict who will be first and deputy first ministers after the Assembly elections next year, but he is certain that whoever is in the lead positions, whether David Trimble, Mark Durkan, Peter Robinson or Gerry Adams, that the civil service "will respond to the democratic system and work with whatever combination is presented. And that is how is should be because we are professionals."
He is proud and protective of the civil service and feels it has not received the tribute it deserves. He believes it has underpinned society here in very difficult circumstances. "I do genuinely believe the civil service has had a tremendous moral authority coming from within itself. That sense of duty and obligation has been very important during the Troubles," he says.
He is conscious, too, of the political problems and divisions but believes devolution will survive the pressures. "I think the roots of the agreement are going deeper all the time . . . People are learning how to work together, even with difficulty on occasion, but nonetheless they are learning how to work together."
Golf and boating are his hobbies. For years he was responsible for building up Stormont's art collection. Colin Middleton and William Conor paintings in his recently refurbished office point to some wise investments over the years.
He won't go totally out to pasture. There may be openings for a man of such experience and contacts in the private sector. "I have had a good time in the civil service," he says. "I am a very fortunate person."
Whatever he does he will continue to take quiet satisfaction as he drives through his native Belfast and observes the positive structural changes of his regime. "I get great satisfaction every day as I cross the river," he says.