Richard Bruton's decision to retire at the next general election will deprive Fine Gael of a sharp intellect and rarely-matched wealth of political experience.
A junior minister in the last year of the Garret FitzGerald-led Fine Gael-Labour coalition, he joined the party’s front bench after FitzGerald’s defeat in the 1987 election. When the party returned to Government in 1994 – led by his brother John – he was made minister for enterprise and employment.
He shone in the role and, despite Bertie Ahern’s seemingly unchallengeable dominance of Irish politics, Bruton’s contributions were central to making Fine Gael a viable alternative by the time of the 2007 election. Luckily for the party, it came up short in that contest; the financial crash, which would begin the following year, would decimate the government and reorder Irish politics.
Eventually, after a particularly poor opinion poll result in the early summer of 2010, Bruton led a challenge to Kenny. It was poorly timed, and even more poorly executed; aided by the muscular political skills of Phil Hogan, Kenny beat back the challenge. He became Taoiseach eight months later. It was an approach that demonstrated his knowledge of how to work the levers of power; as the economy rebounded, new jobs were created at a pace that saw Bruton hit his target of 100,000 new jobs by 2016 two years early.
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