Ruairi Quinn TD
Minister for Education and Skills
Incumbent
Assumed office 9 March 2011
Preceded by	Mary Coughlan
Teachta Dála
Incumbent
Assumed office February 1982
In office June 1977 – June 1981
Constituency	Dublin South–East
Senator
In office October 1981 – February 1982
Constituency	Industrial and Commercial Panel
In office July 1976 – June 1977
Constituency	Nominated by the Taoiseach
Leader of the Labour Party
In office October 1997 – August 2002
Preceded by	Dick Spring
Succeeded by	Pat Rabbitte
Minister for Enterprise and Employment
In office 12 January 1993 – 17 November 1994
Preceded by	Pádraig Flynn
Succeeded by	Charlie McCreevy
Minister for Finance
In office 15 December 1994 – 26 June 1997
Preceded by	Bertie Ahern
Succeeded by	Charlie McCreevy
Personal details
Born	(1946-04-02) 2 April 1946 (age 66) Dublin, Ireland
Political party	Labour Party
Spouse(s)	Liz Allman
Children	3
Alma mater	University College Dublin
Website	Official website

Ruairi Quinn (born 2 April 1946) is an Irish Labour Party politician who has been Minister for Education and Skills since March 2011. He is currently a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South–East constituency.^[1] He was Minister for Finance from 1994 to 1997, and leader of the Labour Party from 1997 to 2002.

Early life[link]

Quinn was born on 2 April 1946. His family were prominent republicans in the South Down area in the 1920s, taking an active part in the IRA during the War of Independence and the Civil War. The Quinns were prosperous merchants in Newry, County Down, but were forced to move south to Dublin in the 1930s where Quinn's father built a successful business career. Quinn was educated at Saint Michael's College, Ballsbridge, and Blackrock College where he was academically successful and an outstanding athlete and a member of the Senior Cup rugby team. From an early age, he was interested in art and won the all-Ireland Texaco Children's Art competition. This led him to study architecture at University College Dublin (UCD) in 1964 and later at the School of Ekistics in Athens.

In 1965, Quinn joined the Labour Party working for Michael O'Leary's successful campaign in Dublin North–Central. In the following years, Quinn was a leading student radical in UCD demanding reform of the University's structures and the old fashioned architectural course that then prevailed. He rejected the Catholicism of his youth and became an existential atheist. He also travelled in Europe and became a europhile which was to be a defining characteristic of his political career. He qualified as an architect in 1969 and married for the first time that year before embarking on studies in Athens. He and his first wife had a son and a daughter. He married again in 1990 and has a son with his second wife, Liz Allman who's family came from Milltown, Co.Kerry. He became employed as an architect with Dublin Corporation in 1971.

In 1972, Quinn decided he would stand for the Labour Party in the next general election and hoped he would be the running mate of the sitting Labour deputy for Dublin South–East, Noel Browne. The party organisation was largely moribund since Browne's election in 1969 as Browne had been ill and little work had been done locally. When the election was called in February 1973, Quinn found he was the only Labour Party candidate as Browne refused to stand in principled opposition to Labour's decision to enter into a pre-election pact with Fine Gael to form a National Coalition. Quinn lost by 39 votes to Fergus O'Brien of Fine Gael in the final count. Following the 1973 election, Quinn began to rebuild the Labour Party in Dublin South–East with his mainly youthful supporters. He won a council seat on Dublin Corporation at the local elections in 1974 in the Pembroke-Rathmines local electoral area and took a leading role in the Labour Party group on the city council.^{[citation needed]}

He was a partner in an architecture firm from 1973 to 1982. In 1976 he was nominated by the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, to Seanad Éireann when Brendan Halligan won a by-election in Dublin South–West and his Senate seat became vacant. He was first elected a Labour Party TD for Dublin South–East at the 1977 general election. Quinn was at this time quite associated with environmental issues being the first professional architect and town planner ever elected to the Dáil. He served as environment spokesperson for the Labour Party and was very close to the party leader, Frank Cluskey, whom he had voted for in the leadership contest of 1977. He lost his seat at the 1981 general election and was elected to the 15th Seanad on the Industrial and Commercial Panel. He was re-elected as TD at the February 1982 general election and has retained his seat since.^[2]

Early ministerial career[link]

In 1982 he became Minister of State at the Department of the Environment. Between 1983 and 1986 he served as Minister for Labour. From 1986 to 1987 he was appointed Minister for the Public Service, held in addition to the Labour portfolio. In 1989 he became deputy leader of the Labour Party. He was director of elections for Mary Robinson's successful Presidential election campaign in 1990.

Minister for Enterprise and Employment[link]

In the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party coalition government of 1993–1994 Quinn became Minister for Enterprise and Employment.

He oversaw the merger of the former Department of Industry and Commerce with the former Department of Labour, with a new focus on enterprise development and the reduction of the then high level of unemployment. Quinn implemented reform of industrial strategy and reorganised the industrial development agencies. He also introduced the Community Employment Programme to provide activity and involvement for unemployed workers in 1994. This proved to be particularly successful.

Quinn was seen as comfortable with the Fianna Fáil members of the cabinet. He also tended to be a moderniser in economic terms but, despite attempts, failed to close the Irish Steel company in Haulbowline, County Cork, a classic loss-making smoke stack industry that harked back to an earlier era. Nevertheless, it was in August, 1994, while Quinn and Fianna Fáil's Bertie Ahern were economic ministers, that the Irish economy was first described as the "Celtic Tiger".

Quinn, along with many of his Labour cabinet colleagues, strove unsuccessfully to keep the Fianna Fáil Labour Government together during the Father Brendan Smyth crisis in November 1994. He records in his autobiography that he still cannot understand why that Government fell.

Minister for Finance[link]

The following year he became Minister for Finance in the Fine Gael, Labour Party and Democratic Left "Rainbow Coalition" government. Quinn took a relatively conservative line as Finance Minister, being conscious of his position as the first Labour Minister for Finance in Irish political history. He quickly proved his competence, dispelling opposition jibes and stock market fears about a social democratic minister holding the sensitive finance portfolio. The Irish economy continued to perform, while inflation and the government finances were kept under firm control. Unemployment gradually fell and public debt levels improved.

During Quinn's tenure as Minister for Finance, the overall tax burden in Ireland (the ratio of tax revenue, including pay related social insurance levies, to gross national product) fell from 38.7% to 34.8%, of by 1.3 percentage points each year. He achieved this by limiting current government spending to grow by 6.8% in nominal terms or 4.8% in real terms, against a backdrop of improving economic fortunes, due to increasing investment in technology intensive sectors of the Irish economy.

Under Quinn, the General Government Balance went from a deficit of 2.1% in 1995 to a surplus of 1.1% in 1997. The General Government Debt went from 81% of GNP in 1995 to 63.6% in 1997. The year before Quinn became an economic Minister in 1993, Irish economic growth was 2.5% (1992). In 1993 GNP growth was 3%; in 1994, 6.5%; in 1995, 8%; in 1996, 7.8%; and finally in 1997, 10.3%. The unemployment rate fell from 1993 to 1997 as follows: 15.7% in 1993; 14.7% in 1994; 12.2% in 1995; 11.9% in 1996; and finally, 10.3% in 1997.

Quinn served as the President of the Ecofin Council of the European Union in 1996, and worked to accelerate the launch of the European Single Currency, whilst securing Ireland's qualification for the eurozone. Quinn, and his party leader and Tánaiste, Foreign Minister Dick Spring enjoyed a somewhat uneasy relationship during the Rainbow Coalition, as recounted in Quinn's 2005 memoir. At the 1997 general election the Labour Party returned to opposition, winning only 17 of its outgoing 33 seats. Many other ministers of the Labour Party were under significant pressure from the media (particularly the Irish Independent) concerning allegations of cronyism ("jobs for the boys") and abusing the privileges of office. In comparison, the opposition under Bertie Ahern placed heavy reliance on cutting tax rates as opposed to widening tax bands favoured by Quinn. Ahern also claimed credit for the country's improving economy was due to his earlier term in government.

Leader of the Labour Party[link]

Accession to leadership[link]

In October 1997, Dick Spring retired as leader of the Labour Party following an unsuccessful campaign by the Labour Party candidate, Adi Roche, in the 1997 Irish presidential election. Quinn defeated Brendan Howlin to become the new leader. In 1999 the Labour Party and Democratic Left merged. Proinsias De Rossa of the latter party became the largely symbolic party president, while Quinn remained as leader of the party. He used the years of leadership to develop a strong policy platform, publishing a Spatial Strategy for future development of the country, promoting universal access to health insurance, advocating reform of the Garda Síochána (police), and arguing for closer European integration. Fianna Fáil countered by cleverly exploiting Quinn's comfortable middle class background, labelling him "Mr Angry from Sandymount," the middle class district of Dublin where Quinn is a longtime resident, and representative of, in the Dáil.

2002 general election[link]

At the 2002 general election, which saw the ruling Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats government re-elected, the Labour Party returned with 1 seat less than it had held previously. Quinn fought that election on an independent platform although he indicated a preference to enter government with Fine Gael, which he had served with in the Rainbow coalition era. Quinn's strategy was predicated on the Labour Party holding the balance of power and keeping a distance from the two bigger parties. This underestimated the attraction for the electorate of the outgoing Ahern Government that had enjoyed extraordinary economic growth and prosperity.

Realising that the choice was between a majority Fianna Fáil government on the one hand, or a government of Fianna Fáil in coalition with the Progressive Democrats, through their president, Michael McDowell, a constituency rival of Quinn's, seized the moment and put themselves forward as the guarantor of the public interest in a new Fianna Fáil government. This left the Labour Party stranded and almost as irrelevant to the outcome of the election. Under the leadership of Michael Noonan, Fine Gael lost 23 seats, being reduced to 31 seats, their worst performance in decades.

Meanwhile, the Progressive Democrats doubled their seats to eight and emerged with two full cabinet positions in a new coalition with Fianna Fáil. Quinn was gravely disappointed that, even though Labour had not lost seats in net numbers and Fine Gael had lost 23 seats, he had failed to increase the number of seats his party held, in an election that resulted in gains for small parties on the left end of the political spectrum, such as Sinn Féin and the Green Party. Quinn himself was re-elected on the last count by 600 votes. Accepting that he would now be in opposition for another term, and seeking to spend more time with his young family, Quinn announced that he would not seek re-election for another six year term as leader of the Labour Party, at the end of August 2002.

Post-leadership[link]

In October 2002 Quinn's term as party leader expired and he retired as Labour leader, being replaced in a leadership election by Pat Rabbitte. When Rabbitte resigned as party leader in 2007, Quinn supported the successful candidacy of Eamon Gilmore. His public support of Gilmore, where he also brought the endorsement of all the Dublin City Councillors in his area, was seen as instrumental in discouraging other candidates from entering the race. Quinn caused anger and controversy when he refused to give up his Ministers pension worth €41,656 while sitting as a TD in 2009. He eventually backed down after pressure was put on him to give up the pension.

He led the European Movement Ireland, a pro-EU lobby group in Ireland until late 2007, when he re-founded the Irish Alliance for Europe to campaign on the Treaty of Lisbon. Quinn is also Vice-President and Treasurer of the Party of European Socialists. He is a brother of Lochlann Quinn, former Chairman of Allied Irish Banks, and a first cousin of Senator Feargal Quinn. His nephew, Oisín Quinn, is a Labour Party Dublin City Councillor and former Dáil candidate.

In 2005, his political memoir, Straight Left, was published.

2007 general election[link]

At the 2007 general election, Quinn increased his share of the poll by some 4% and was returned to the 30th Dáil. He was nominated for the post of Ceann Comhairle but was defeated by John O'Donoghue. Quinn became Labour Party spokesperson on Education and Science as a member of Eamon Gilmore's front bench in September 2007. Quinn's local Labour Party holds five of the ten local authority council seats since the 2009 local elections, including his nephew, Oisin Quinn, who many see as his long term successor. He played a pivotal role in the successful second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in September 2009, and continues to be an office holder with the Party of European Socialists.

2011 general election and Minister for Education[link]

In September, 2010, Quinn was appointed the Labour Party's national director of elections for the 2011 General Election by Gilmore. He had been selected along with Cllr Kevin Humphreys to be a candidate for Labour in that election. Both Quinn and Humphreys were elected to the 31st Dail on 27 February 2011, by clever vote management that saw the Labour Party in Dublin South–East secure two seats with only a quarter of the first preference vote.

On 9 March 2011 Quinn was appointed as Minister for Education and Skills in the new Fine Gael-Labour coalition government.^[3]

In April 2011 Quinn confirmed his support for the radical overhaul of the Junior Certificate, which had been put in train by his predecessor, saying the exam is “no longer suitable as the main form of student assessment in lower-secondary education’’ and must be changed.^[4][5]

In May 2011 Quinn confirmed a u-turn on a pre-election pledge, made less than 100 days earlier to student voters and their parents, that he would reverse a proposed increase in third level student registration fees, instead providing for a €500 increase in the fee payable by students.^[6] In July 2011 Quinn has again refused to rule out the return of college fees as he acknowledged the funding crisis in the higher education sector. The Minister told a meeting of the Higher Education Authority (HEA) the funding crisis in higher education will “not go away” for many years to come. Asked if new charges were planned he said: “I honestly can’t say. We are looking for efficiencies in the system at third level. “I am not ruling anything in or out until we get into the detailed negotiations with the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure . . . I have said to Brendan Howlin that I will deliver.”^[7]

On the 10th March, 2012, Quinn became the Labour Party's longest ever serving Cabinet Minister passing out the tenure in office of Dick Spring.

See also[link]

• Families in the Oireachtas

Bibliography[link]

• Ruairi Quinn (2005). Straight Left: A Journey in Politics. Dublin: Hodder Headline Ireland. ISBN 0-340-83296-7. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ruairi Quinn's official website
• Ruairi Quinn's page on the Labour Party website