INTERNATIONAL ROLE:Ireland's role in the Lisbon Treaty may have influenced the timing of Ahern's departure, PAUL GILLESPIE
BERTIE AHERN'S political career has coincided with a radical change in world politics which has brought the international and the domestic levels closer together for Ireland and similar small developed states. That process has gone furthest within the European Union, where sovereignty has been deliberately pooled the better to handle them.
But growing globalisation and economic interdependence over the last two decades have made it a universal trend. Mr Ahern's particular talent has been his ability to adapt and apply his domestic political skills to this changing international context, in which the local and the global became proverbially intertwined.
He was exposed to such changes throughout his ministerial career. As minister for labour and later minister for finance in Charles Haughey's and Albert Reynold's governments from 1987-94 he was part of the cabinet team who put together the package which prepared the way for the growth take-off of the 1990s. Later, as taoiseach from 1997 to 2008, the groundwork laid down earlier was turned to advantage in running EU business and in several strategic negotiations, including the 1999 Agenda 2000 talks on the EU budget, the Nice Treaty, the Constitutional Treaty, Ireland's 2004 EU presidency and the Lisbon Treaty.
The Single European Act helped create an economic framework in which foreign investment, especially from the United States, would flow to Ireland. That attraction was reinforced by the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, which responded to the end of the cold war by putting EU political union on the agenda and introducing the single currency, the euro.
US firms felt they had to get into the European market, and Ireland was a convenient launching pad for that. The structural, regional and cohesion funding negotiated with Brussels over those years compensated for the deep cuts made in public spending. And social partnership agreements created a new mechanism to involve government, business and trade unions in a corporatist response endorsing relatively low taxation.
Bertie Ahern was closely involved in this package in both ministerial roles, as it became embedded in the rapidly developing EU setting. Ireland's EU presidency in January-June 1990 exposed all cabinet members to European politics and it was run by Haughey personally, rather like Ahern's EU presidency in 2004.
Thus the linkage between national and EU bargaining became part and parcel of Ahern's cabinet experience. This laid down his enduring commitment to European integration. He found its style quite compatible with his own approach to consensual bargaining politically and in industrial relations. This was to develop into a longer-term engagement in later years, based on conviction as well as calculation. Influence on the system flowed from careful attention to alliances and choice of issues rather than on voting rights or vetoes.
Ahern broadened his international exposure during his time in opposition from 1994-7. On a visit to Taiwan in 1995 he became convinced Ireland should focus more clearly on developing relations with the new growth economies there, in China, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. This would supplement the links built up with Japan during the 1980s. When he returned to power as taoiseach in 1997 he went about putting the government's Asia Strategy in place as a co-ordinating programme between relevant departments.
Relations with the United States are also embedded in Ireland's international positioning. For Ahern, they were reinforced by the Northern Ireland peace process, specifically Bill Clinton's and George Mitchell's roles in the Belfast Agreement.
Ahern is well aware of how such access multiplies Ireland's international influence. Pragmatism shaded over into opportunism when he maintained it during the Bush years, notwithstanding disagreements over US unilateralism in Iraq and elsewhere.
But he repeatedly defended keeping open the political lines as necessary for Ireland's interests.
His relationship with Tony Blair has been a central aspect of Ahern's years as Taoiseach. What developed from the peace process took on a wider significance, as Irish and UK positions converged in several other EU and international policy areas. Both men shared a commitment to open economies, trade and markets, despite differing interests on the euro, Iraq and agriculture.
Blair's revisionist "third way" social democracy overlaps with Ahern's own political philosophy, as several Labour Party leaders ruefully observed. Easy access to Downing Street amplified Ahern's own confidence.
There was also a similar concern with African issues in recent years, strengthened by his support for the goal of reaching the United Nations goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for development aid. That commitment helped Ireland win its seat on the Security Council in 2001-3, following Ahern's speech to a special UN summit.
Ahern adopted a task force approach to the important Agenda 2000 negotiations in 1999. They concerned the continuation of Ireland's substantial transfers from the EU budget, through structural funds, cohesion and regional funds, agriculture and money for the Northern peace process.
He worked with a small team of ministers and officials from key departments, showing a superb grasp of the technical details and a shrewd reading of changing attitudes to Ireland in other EU states, given its economic success. He himself travelled to all the EU capitals in the run-up to the Berlin Council in March 1999, where a beneficial bargain was struck for funding until 2006.
A similar approach was followed in the more demanding 2004 EU presidency. But that success - the high point of Ahern's international career aside from the Belfast Agreement - was prefigured by his shock at the defeat of the first referendum on the Nice Treaty.
This was a critical juncture for Ireland's EU policy, calling into question the capacity of political leaders to carry the public along with them, and raising the question of how to retrieve the credentials created in the system in the 1990s. Ahern quickly resolved to bolster political involvement through the all-party forum on Europe, to strengthen parliamentary scrutiny and inter-departmental coordination in preparation for another referendum.
When it was passed through a far more effective campaign, planning for the EU presidency proceeded in continuum.
Four formal priorities were set out for the presidency: completing the enlargement from 15 to 25 member states; developing the Lisbon strategy of co-ordinated economic co-operation; initiatives in justice and home affairs; and improving EU-US relations.
But confronted with the need to complete negotiations on the constitutional treaty, after the Italians failed to complete them, Ahern had to make that his principal objective.
His approach to the task was characteristically cautious and strategic. He worked with a small team of officials and ministers, first establishing that the political will existed to reach a settlement in June 2004.
Their techniques included a neutral stance, careful consultative listening to build trust, early indication of strategic priorities, many bilateral meetings involving Ahern and members of his team, timely closing down of issues and leaving the most difficult issues until the last. Their work was rewarded with success at the Brussels European Council in June, when he received a standing ovation from the other political leaders. Many said it was the best EU presidency on record.
As a result, many of the political compromises reached in the constitutional treaty, which survive in the Lisbon text, are directly influenced by Ireland. That knowledge, and the importance of not allowing his personal political difficulties get in the way of the Government's Yes campaign, may have influenced the timing of Mr Ahern's departure.
His international role stands up well alongside his domestic record and his work on the peace process. Historians must judge whether he accepted the constraints of globalisation too readily, was too accommodating to the US over Shannon, and proved unable to create a sustained public commitment to the EU project in a period when Ireland was gradually becoming a net contributor to the budget.
It will be all the more important to maintain that commitment when transfers are phased out and we need access to the system to keep up our influence on it.