Paschal Donohoe determined to make his own impression

When Irish politicians are “done” by comics Oliver Callan and Mario Rosenstock they are elevated, in the public consciousness, from being unfamiliar anoraks to persons of interest.

Chances are when you mention the parodied politician’s name in company, someone will serve up an impression of that person: a poor imitation of an imitation, gen-uuuuh-ine-leeeee.

For the mimicked politician, the profile boost is a mixed blessing. Often they may hate it or believe the impression sounds nothing like them. Regardless, they usually put a brave face on it because, if nothing else, it raises their profile.

Fine Gael Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe is currently “starring” in Callan’s radio spot. He is an easy mark for an impressionist, with a distinctive voice and sing-song cadence.

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Donohoe, unlike some previous targets, is unlikely to do a double-act with Callan or Rosenstock any time soon. He is deeply uncomfortable with such impressions and the heebie-jeebies factor is such that he quickly leaves any room in which his alter-ego is on the radio.

This goes a little way to explaining Donohoe, who is neither unusual nor conventional in his political approach. Like any TD in an ultra-competitive constituency such as his three-seater Dublin Central one, he realises the value of wearing down shoe-leather.

However, he is not in the mould of the extrovert glad-handler we expect Irish politicians to be. He is polite and courteous. He is not exactly self-effacing but also does not need to shout “look at me” as regularly as some colleagues.

Negotiating skill

Donohoe has been one of the stand-outs of this minority Government. He took over the reins from Brendan Howlin in the Department of Public Expenditure and has shown he is no pushover. He might present like marshmallow but is hard as toffee to the bite.

“Don’t be fooled by that softly-softly personality,” says a Fianna Fáil front-bencher. “Behind it he’s a bitter Blueshirt!”

That’s a back-handed compliment to Donohoe’s negotiating skill and the ideology that underlies it. He was unyielding during government formation talks with Fianna Fáil in March and April and has proved to be obdurate (though unfailingly polite) in negotiations with Ministers over departmental budgets and with unions over restoration of public service pay and conditions.

Donohoe has been in national politics since 2007 when he was elected to the Seanad. As a Dáil backbencher from 2011, he was dutiful and loyal, taking on (and completing) any project asked of him.

Along the way, it gave him a bit of an “altar boy” image, a conformist rather than a rebel. You won’t find him standing at party meetings shouting, “I’d go through the hobs of Hell for you, Enda boy!”, but everyone knows he’s a Kenny loyalist deep down.

He is an ideological Fine Gaeler rather than an instinctual or hereditary politician. His family has no background in politics and he describes himself as a liberal centrist. That is not altogether accurate. He is right of centre, Fine Gael right of centre.

“I am believer in a strong, liberal centrist approach to politics. When I say strong, I want to be able to make decisions that do the right thing in the long run,” he says.

“I am not a member of the far right or far left . I am as equally a conviction politician as any other figure. When I talk about a strong approach, that is standing over and being willing to defend a moderate approach to politics rather than those who would prefer a radical approach.

“When I say liberal, I mean a market economy combined with institutions that deliver fairness and will resist well-organised interest groups.”

He repeatedly emphasises the need for what he describes as a strong liberal and economic approach. “The politics I try to deliver and stand over is incrementalism and steady gain. My defining political experience as a TD is the big gains of today are the cutbacks of tomorrow in wages, services or tax.”

Difficult decisions

An avid reader and counted as a bit of an intellectual in the Leinster House ranks, Donohoe says the open nature of the Irish economy means things can improve very quickly but when they go bad, they can go really bad really quickly.

He says globalisation has hastened the fact that national governments no longer have the levers they had 50 years ago at their disposal. “Changes in economic circumstance happen at a velocity that was unthinkable in the 1960s with capital flows and digitisation.”

Donohoe was elevated from the department of transport, tourism and sport to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform when the Government was formed in May. He is full of praise for his predecessor, Howlin, and the difficult decisions taken by him.

The budget was the dominant theme of his year. The challenge was on two levels. The first was trying to reconcile expectations of Ministers and others with the money at his disposal. The second was that the mechanics were difficult, as the budget had to be managed in conjunction with Fianna Fáil.

Immediately after the budget came the negotiations with public service unions, especially those outside the Lansdowne Road agreement. The Labour Court’s recommendation on Garda allowances was undoubtedly a big blow for the Government, though Donohoe would not describe it that way.

“I acknowledged and continue to acknowledge that it had significant consequence for everybody else in the public service. I will leave it to others to describe those consequences,” he says.

The underlying principle, he says, is that a small open economy needs a collectively agreed public service income policy. “It is the most effective and strategic choice it can take.”

Should we expect Social Partnership Mark 2?

“Social partnership has become a bit of a dirty word in terms of policy-making. The phrase I will be using is one of collective agreement where we avoid the leapfrogging approach that we saw the potential of in the aftermath of the Labour Court,” he says.

“I don’t want to end up in a situation where, sector by sector, multiple unions want to pursue claims on behalf of their members. The collective outcome for our country would be very challenging and very difficult.”

Extra hours

You sense he is not keen to dilute the Croke Park agreement either. It focused on increased productivity from the public service, mostly through extra hours.

“There are over 400,000 Croke Park hours worked every year. It has made a gigantic difference to a public service that was shrinking in numbers in recent years but that is now changing,” Donohoe says.

Invariably, the question of the public pension will come into the debate. Retiring public servants get a tax-free lump sum worth 1½ times their final salary (or career average for newer entrants) plus a pension of 50 per cent of salary. In the private sector, the value of pensions has plummeted and, in some cases, they have disappeared. The gap is expanding rapidly.

“I was as long in the private sector as I have been in public life. I have a strong and clear understanding of the challenges of people who work in the private sector and what has happened to the value of the [private] pension,” he says.

“The differential has widened [between public and private]. We want the Public Service Pay Commission to produce an evidence-based outlook looking at value and worth.”

A recent example of that was the exercise done on the average salary with knobs on for an experienced garda (€100,000 a year including pension). The gardaí claimed it was inaccurate but the well of public sympathy dried up very quickly.

Long-term investment

So what is Donohoe’s prognosis for this Government? He is optimistic. “Do I think it will last for five years? That is not realistic. I do believe it will govern for many years. It requires a huge amount of work to do this.”

His priorities largely revolve around long-term investment, particularly high-capacity public transport.

“We have the review of the capital plan in 2017 which will last to 2022. I am ready to kick off from early January. We have allowed an additional €2.2 billion committed to housing and to housing-related infrastructure. If our growth forecast for the coming years do not materially change, we have additional resources,” he says.

And those resources will be primarily geared towards transport, the importance of which Donohoe repeatedly underlines. He almost says failure is not an option.

“High-capacity public transport solutions in the coming years will be of the most critical importance,” he says.

“There are two issues if we can’t do it. The friction between a growing economy and poor infrastructure will become very evident. [Second] there are new requirements [on greenhouse gas emissions] set down by the Paris agreement post-2020 [that Ireland will fail to meet].”

On the reform side, he has published the Public Sector Standards Bill, with its provisions for a public sector standards commissioner as recommended by the planning tribunal. He says the review of new lobbying laws will be complete by next February, and he is also working on an open-data strategy for Ireland, making huge public service data sets available to the public.

Donohoe’s name has invariably been added to the mix of potential Fine Gael leaders. His response to this matter is interesting. He doesn’t come out with a straight-out No when asked.

Unsurprisingly, he extols the virtues of current party leader and Taoiseach Enda Kenny, of whom he is a staunch supporter.

For himself, he says he wants to “pass on the jersey” he was handed by Howlin in his department in as good a condition as he received it.

However, it’s all about the next jersey, the one with the captain’s armband, isn’t it? Despite his protests, for other political players, Donohoe’s now in the reckoning, gen-uuuuh-ine-leeeee.