1985 was an annus horribilus for Gemma Hussey. As minister for education it was her words that finally lit the flame that was to lead all the way to Croke Park. She recalls a challenging time.
1985 was the third year of coalition government in a country facing the kind of problems that seem unimaginable today. There had been three general elections over 18 months and a Fine Gael/Labour coalition - with a very slender majority - took office after the last of them.
At the first Cabinet meeting, held, as is tradition, in a room at Áras an Uachtaráin after the president presents the seals of office, the taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, warned us that we were about to face a very stark reality. And so it proved. It was to be a government which had to try to return stability and realism to the public finances. High inflation, unemployment and emigration were the worst results of the profligacy preceding us.
By 1985, the country watched as ministers continued to grapple with the problem of controlling spending and the current budget deficit, while trying to protect sensitive areas and to avoid measures which would hurt the poorest. The national debt, built up by the previous government and recklessly increased by Charles Haughey's spending spree in 1980 and 1981, was still increasing and gobbling huge resources in servicing it.
Public service pay increases had fuelled inflation and plunged the government into further difficulties and so a public service pay freeze was decided by Cabinet on August 19th, 1985. This was, in part, a result of the previous government conceding a 29 per cent increase in 1980 and 1981.
The Irish economy desperately needed investment and the return of external confidence on the international money markets. But investors and lenders - domestic or foreign - needed to be assured that the public finances were under control, and that government would, and could, restore discipline to its budgets.
Ireland was also facing continued violence in the North, which further eroded confidence and so considerable time and energy went into the historic achievement of the Anglo-Irish agreement - which was signed on November 15th, 1985 (and again, vehemently opposed by Fianna Fáil).
Against this background, every minister in a high- spending department had particular difficulties and challenges. Long Cabinet meetings got even longer as spending cuts and other ways of controlling ever-increasing demands were sought. Naturally there were difficulties in finding agreement, and the process was certainly, and understandably, painful, and too slow. The opposition, led by Haughey, implacably opposed each and every measure to restore stability to the finances.
Education, however, was, for the most part, spared from any severe cuts. Progress in 1985 was made on several policy fronts - the establishment of the National Parents' Council, the "Ages for Learning" decisions which introduced the transition year to schools, the newly-created Curriculum and Examinations Board's announcement of the new Junior Cycle examination, the production of the Green Paper "Partners in Education" with its proposals for unifying post-primary structures, and the introduction of oral and aural examinations for foreign languages. It was the government's continual ambition to do as much as possible in every policy area, knowing that increased spending was not an option.
In this situation, an arbitrator's award of an extra 10 per cent to teachers had serious implications for budgetary targets. When it was first leaked to the media, government had to make it quite clear that to meet it would severely damage other sectors of society. Incautiously, I raised the question of the morality of high pay claims for secure and pensionable public servants at a time of great national difficulty, and discovered very quickly that the word morality doesn't feature in pay bargaining.
On the actual day of the demonstration in Croke Park, I was attending a ministers' meeting in Brussels, seeking financial support for vocational education and training for Irish students.
Further talks ensued, while the pay dispute rumbled on. It culminated in a rowdy Dáil debate in February 1986 when the government brought in a motion to give the pay increase, but altering the terms of the arbitrator's award. (This was in keeping with the terms of the Conciliation and Arbitration procedures). It would spread the payment over a longer period which would not upset budgetary strategy as severely as the first proposal. Even that was opposed by Fianna Fáil, but supported by the new Progressive Democrats. Later on in 1986, a further modification was made, which the teachers felt able to accept.
The whole debate and its accompanying controversies certainly had an effect on public and political attitudes. Only a year after that Dáil debate, a Fianna Fáil minority government had to do exactly what they had been totally opposing for the previous four years. Haughey was forced by Ray MacSharry and by the Fine Gael decision known as the Tallaght Strategy (support for stringent measures in the national interest) to address the continuing severe crisis in government finances.
Thus, it was only when politicians finally grasped the nettle of courageous government, that the foundation was laid for the Celtic Tiger.
Gemma Hussey is director of the European Women's Foundation, author of two books - At the Cutting Edge, Cabinet Diaries 1982-87 (Gill & MacMillan) and Ireland Today, Anatomy of a Changing State (Viking Penguin). She served as minister for education, and then social welfare between 1982 and 1987.
