TRIBUTE:Justin Keating was an able minister and a man of great warmth, writes GARRET FITZGERALD
JUSTIN KEATING was a polymath: a veterinarian and farmer; university lecturer; brilliant television producer, political theorist and hard-working government minister.
Our parents knew each other, and he and I had met briefly as children – making hay, I think, at our house in Bray – when he was very small. But when we were both elected to the Dáil in 1969, neither of us had much in the way of memories of that occasion.
For two years after my move from the Seanad to the Dáil, I was Fine Gael’s spokesman on education and although Justin was Labour’s spokesman on the European Community, he campaigned with me against some of Fianna Fáil’s education policies – particularly in relation to the government’s insensitive treatment of the National College of Art – in which he had an interest due to his painter father.
Our friendship grew in 1973 when we were spokesmen in the European referendum campaign – I was for and he was against accession to the community.
We travelled the country together week after week – and we never had difficulty agreeing which of us had performed best in the previous night’s debate! When the referendum was won, the Labour leadership accepted the outcome and prepared to play an active, positive role in the community in government.
Ten months later I became minister for foreign affairs, and Justin became a very effective minister for industry and commerce. During his period in office, his radical socialism softened to a social-democratic stance – close to the political position towards which I had moved during the 1960s. Later in life, he moved back to socialism.
When we acceded, tensions between the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Industry and Commerce intensified. This was due to the latter department’s reluctance to accept that trade policy was now a community competence, a fact that stripped the department of its direct responsibility for external trade policy. Trade issues had to be negotiated in the General Affairs Council, primarily by foreign ministers but generally with the input of industry ministers.
Happily, our friendship enabled us to amicably resolve many interdepartmental conflicts, and he and I greatly enjoyed working together in Brussels.
However, this relationship had an unforeseen political consequence. Quite late in the life of that government, I became aware that Justin’s Labour ministerial colleagues believed I was plotting to help him secure the party’s leadership, something that never entered my head.
On holidays in France in summer, 1974, Justin, together with Mary Robinson and Denis Corboy (then EC representative in Ireland) had helped me prepare the first Irish presidency of the EC. By 1977, I felt Justin’s deep, constructive engagement in Brussels, where he was highly regarded, would make him an ideal candidate for the post of Irish commissioner. Naively, I did not see this appointment as a party issue and was unaware that a year or so earlier all my Fine Gael ministerial colleagues committed to the candidature of Dick Burke, who as education minister had limited involvement with the EC. Despite being foreign minister, I was never approached by my party colleagues on the issue.
I was also unaware that the other Labour ministers had little inclination to expend political capital in seeking this post for a Labour candidate, Thus, as I later discovered, my support for Justin embarrassed both parties and the line-up in cabinet on this appointment followed party lines.
His political career was too brief. In 1977, he was rejected by the electorate in one of its periodic clearouts of able parliamentarians and spent just one more session in the Seanad. That was a pity for he was a true public servant – and a man of great warmth, kindness and humour, who inspired and shared affection.