Just Mary (30 page)

The legislation which led to the bank bailout was passed in the Dáil and the Seanad on 30 September 2008. In a vote in the Dáil, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin
supported the proposed measures; Labour voted against. On 2 October, the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill 2008 was enacted. Brian Lenihan took that Bill himself right through all the
stages in the Dáil, and then straight on into the Seanad, where he was ably assisted by Martin Mansergh. There was confusion and chaos all around, and parliamentary party meetings were in
disarray. Amid the turmoil, Brian Lenihan’s was the one calm, lucid voice, as he strove to explain in plain language what was happening and make clear the serious nature of our predicament
and the action which needed to be taken.

Hot on the heels of the Bank Guarantee and all the associated chaos which ensued, came the Emergency Budget, just two weeks later. By this time we in the parliamentary party were well prepared
for the bad tidings it would bring. But we also knew that it would be crucial as the first step in the massive cutting back in national spending which would be necessary to try to get our situation
under control.

One of the most memorable elements of the Emergency Budget was a seeming attack on the older population around the issue of medical cards. Heretofore, the system had of course been that anybody
over the age of 70 was deemed eligible for a medical card. It was a measure which had been heralded by Charlie McCreevy in December 2000 and had come into effect on 1 July 2001: it had been
blithely agreed to, even though the associated costs would clearly be horrendous. There was no doubt that some of this was quite unfair in a sense: there were some really well-off older people who
could well afford their own medication and doctor visits, but who were eligible for the card anyway under the prevailing system. As soon as the news of the proposed cuts broke, there was huge
public outcry. The over-70s were not having any of it! They marched in protest, occupied a disused church in Dublin and then paraded outside the Dáil: they were certainly not taking it lying
down. There was uproar at subsequent parliamentary party meetings, until eventually an equitable solution and compromise of sorts was found. It was decided that if, through pension or payment, a
person had a combined income of over €1,400 per week as part of a couple, or €700 as a single person, they would not be deemed entitled to a medical card.
Everyone else over 70 would still be eligible.

Although that very contentious issue got sorted out satisfactorily in the end, it left a very bitter aftertaste for many people, and the impression of a government bent on attacking first of all
the older population. This was compounded by the increasingly taciturn nature of Brian Cowen’s public appearances and in his dealings with the media. Taken together with the first Lisbon
defeat, the trauma of the Bank Guarantee and the brutal cuts of this most recent budget, it all added up to not a very pretty picture for Fianna Fáil at the time.

Accordingly, there was a growing sense of dismay within the ranks of the parliamentary party. This was not the Brian Cowen we knew of old: the ‘hail-fellow-well-met’, ordinary bloke
who could appeal to all elements in our society. He still was this person, of course, but it seemed that the sophistication required by his new role on public occasions and in his dealings with the
media was lost on him. He was the same highly intelligent, savvy and responsive fellow as before, but somehow the sense of finesse needed was now missing.

A contributory and disturbing tendency which, we noticed, had begun to permeate Brian Cowen’s public appearances and media interactions was the civil service ‘speak’ which
peppered his discourse in such situations. Let’s say he would be out launching something or at some other kind of public function, and he was asked a question by the media — which
question might have been harmless in essence if there was no big story or issue ongoing at the time — the Taoiseach would slip immediately into civil service jargon, giving a convoluted,
complex answer which would require a lot of work on the part of his listeners to try to understand and to get to the nugget of relevant information.

I for one just couldn’t make any sense of the turn his conversation and discourse had begun to take, because I had never known him to be like that before. In Athlone, we had a very great
affection for Brian Cowen — whenever he visited our town, he was always well-regarded, greatly welcomed and we enjoyed basking in the neighbourly glow of having the Taoiseach living in the
constituency beside us. I remember particularly how he had come to Athlone Institute of Technology to launch various of our initiatives; he also came to visit local industries and schools, and so
forth. Each time, I had found him to be a good and effective person to deal with. Now, however, in that troubled period of his reign as Taoiseach, I was startled and dismayed by the change in his
demeanour and indeed personality. It was as if he didn’t want to be where he was, but that he was struggling on anyway.

All the while, Brian Lenihan was doing his utmost to steer some kind of course through the awful financial storm of the recession that was upon us, trying at the same time to remain calm and
keep outright national panic at bay. After the Emergency Budget of 14 October 2008 came the Supplementary Budget of 7 April 2009, followed by another budget in December that year. I will always
hold fast in my memory the image of Brian as Minister for Finance, standing there with his budget book in his hand in the Dáil to deliver that budget of 9 December 2009, setting out in his
fine, measured, easily understood words what Ireland had to do now and what we could hope the future would hold for us. Of course, he said that we would round the corner, and that over the hill,
there would be salvation for Ireland. In hindsight we can see that that has not come about up to now, but of course Brian Lenihan had to have words like that. How on earth could he have stood up in
the House and delivered a dirge of gloom and despondency and thereby sown utter despair in the hearts of the Irish people? It was only right that he should seek to lift the spirits of the nation.
But it was a very difficult task and, as I have said, one that he had to do alone.

Around this time, I noticed that Brian Lenihan began to telephone me frequently, not to talk about the difficult decisions he had to take, but rather by way of unburdening himself to his trusted
aunt, of relieving the pressures he felt building up in him. I was glad to act as a sounding board for him and to provide an older person’s perspective and just to listen too when he needed
that. The routine became that he would telephone me either on a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday evening: we would often speak together for over an hour. Also, during the week, even though he would be
busy, as would I in my own fashion, he always found time for a quick cup of tea or a brief discussion with me.

The thing about Brian was that no matter how busy, how strained or how tired he was, if he met me or anyone else he knew well in the corridor at work, he would always make sure to stop and talk
and first exchange pleasantries and family news, before lapsing into more serious mode. I suppose in a way this lightened his load and leavened his mind, serving as a reminder of normal, everyday
life, in which he too had to participate like everyone else. He also made the time to be as friendly and affable and outgoing as ever with those in the parliamentary party, so many of whom were
confused and deeply riven with doubts by this point.

Chapter
19

D
espite all the gloomy forebodings, the budget in early December 2009 was carried in the Dáil and received a mixed, but reasonably
favourable reception in the press and with the public. In the weeks which followed however, a terrible stroke of fate befell Brian Lenihan. This was his illness. By that Christmas Eve, he would
already have confirmation that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer, the deadly disease to which he was to finally succumb, eighteen months later.

People have often asked me, how did it begin? What were the first signs for Brian that all was not well? Well, it seems that it had started with a stomach ache, which he put down to having eaten
something at an official dinner which didn’t agree with him — perhaps some chicken or fish or something of that nature. But when the discomfort persisted, Brian went to see his local
doctor, who referred him immediately to the Mater Hospital. The first impression there was that it might be a hiatus hernia, and a number of tests and other investigations were carried out. Forgive
me for being detailed, but people do ask these questions.

I remember speaking to Brian’s brother Conor Lenihan on the telephone on 19 December or thereabouts, and we assured one another that a hiatus hernia was not that serious and that Brian
would be okay. But by Christmas Eve we knew the worst — and the worst was pancreatic cancer. I’ll never forget the utter despair which swept over the Lenihan family that Christmas Eve.
All of us were devastated: Brian’s wife Patricia, his two lovely children Tom and Clare (I don’t know how much the children knew at this stage about the potentially fatal outcome of
pancreatic cancer), his mother Ann, his sister Anita, his brothers Conor, Niall and Paul, and his two aunts. I felt it so keenly because as I have mentioned earlier, he was my dear friend and my
dear work colleague, and our friendship went far beyond an aunt/nephew relationship. All of us spent a very unhappy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Things were not about to get any better. On 26 December, even as we struggled with our grief, reeling from this terrible blow,
TV
3 chose to tell the world about
Brian’s cancer, in a startling, ‘breaking news’-style intervention by their political correspondent, Ursula Halligan. She broke the news, not just to the nation, but to the
extended circle of Brian’s family and friends. Yes, we had been alerted just a day or two before Christmas, but there had been no chance for Brian and his family to tell the other very
important people around them about what was happening. And for us to see it being featured so openly and graphically on our
TV
screens, with what seemed to us a lack of
sensitivity and finer feeling — that was very hard to bear.
TV
3 defended themselves meanwhile, by saying that the public should know and that it was a matter of public
interest. Of course we were more than aware of the need for those in public life to be accountable in such situations, and Brian had always intended to give an account of himself after he had had
the privacy of spending the few days of Christmas with his family.

Accordingly, as New Year 2010 dawned, Brian went on the
News at One
show with Seán O’Rourke and gave a lengthy interview, in which — I don’t use the words lightly
— the sheer nobility and the hugely open and generous nature of the man was laid bare. Can you imagine how difficult that must have been for him? Yet he spoke with such grace and elegance
that it appeared effortless. But of course, effortless it was not. He would have been so conscious of his wife and children; of those in his wider family circle; of his friends; of his party
colleagues. He would have been so aware too of the pall, the sense of pessimism that had descended on the people of the country, on learning this news on top of all their other troubles at such a
difficult time. Yet in that interview with Seán O’Rourke, Brian explained with such courage and composure exactly where the tumour lay — at the neck of the pancreas and on a
major blood vessel — and that therefore he could not undergo an operation.

There is not a family in the land that has not had some experience of cancer within their ranks or among their dear friends and their close circles. Cancer is here to stay for the foreseeable
future and despite all the advances — and there have been many leaps forward in such research — pancreatic cancer remains the one whose diagnosis will strike a chill into
everyone’s heart. It knows no mercy; it takes no prisoners. Whether discovered early or late, it is lethal.

In that period immediately after Brian’s diagnosis, it seemed for me as if all of the raw and hitherto submerged grief, which was still deep inside me from the loss of Enda, had suddenly
come to the surface again. I felt alone. I felt bereft. I felt as if life was coming to an end. And part of me raged. Why couldn’t it have been one of us, who already had a good few years of
life behind us? Why did it have to be this 50-year-old man, blessed with a terrific intellect and so many leadership qualities, seemingly full of vigour, who had now succumbed to the malign
influence of this deadly disease?

Brian started his chemotherapy almost at once. Yet he continued all the while to put in a full day’s work every day in the Department of Finance. During that period, he came in to the
Department at 7.30 a.m. and often would not leave until midnight, day by day. He would frequently go into work again on Saturdays and Sundays. There was so much to be done: so many files to read,
ponder and initial; so many measures to be planned, so many next steps he had to take. Yes, he was constantly overworked and of course some people have said that if he hadn’t worked like
that, his illness might not have been able to take hold. Was it the tension and the pressure of the huge financial burden Brian was struggling with, was it all of this which brought about the
cancer? It is impossible for anyone to know.