As Charlie McCreevy leaves the Department of Finance today, Dan O'Brien suggests that spurious debate about how 'right-wing' he was as Minister has obscured his many real shortcomings.
Ideologues and the politically partisan talk endlessly of Charlie McCreevy's tax policy. It will, they agree, be his lasting legacy. This view is perplexing for two reasons. First, since 1987 the social partners have had more influence over the broad thrust of tax policy than finance ministers.
Second, there was very little change in the tax burden on his watch. The first point is self-evident, the second requires substantiation because the untruth that Mr McCreevy radically cut taxes has been repeated so often it has come to be commonly believed.
Ignore the spin and consider the facts. When Mr McCreevy moved into Merrion Street in 1997 the Exchequer squeezed taxpayers for €21 billion. By 2003, that figure had almost doubled. As a proportion of national income, the tax burden did fall, but only slightly, from 35.4 per cent of GNP to 34.2 per cent.
In fairness, where he had leeway on taxation, he was at times prepared to be innovative.
Among the few big positive changes made during his long tenure was the introduction of tax credits. These reduced inequities and helped integrate the benefits and tax systems making it easier for those on welfare to escape poverty traps. But for the real story of Mr McCreevy's time as finance minister, one has to consider his spending record, because this is where he had genuine influence. And here the picture is dismal. Start with the recklessness with which he used taxpayers' money for electoral purposes.
While governments everywhere tend to loosen the purse strings to win voters' favour, from 2001 Mr McCreevy simply upended the public purse, allowing spending to run out of control.
The splurge mirrored in many respects the fiasco after the 1977 election. The big difference between the two periods was something over which Mr McCreevy had no control - the world economy. Had it taken a serious downturn, as happened in 1979, the Irish economy, and the public finances, would quickly have followed suit.
What made his gamble so reckless was how real the risks of global recession were. For some time serious imbalances have existed internationally. These must inevitably unwind. Had they done so suddenly while spending was so wildly out of control, it could well have been back to a 1980s future of unemployment and stagnation.
But Mr McCreevy not only gambled with national prosperity, he repeatedly failed in his duty to ensure that the money given him in taxes was not squandered: he made no attempt to prevent the benchmarking scandal; he did not fight the decision to offer open-ended indemnification to the religious orders; and only belatedly did he make any effort to curb an unreformed health system's insatiable appetite for cash.
Mr McCreevy conjured up another multi-billion loss-maker all on his own. The SSIA scheme would, he said, cool the economy at a time when it was white-hot. But such measures have been tried elsewhere and failed. He knew this because his civil servants told him so. He ignored their pleadings and ploughed ahead. More bizarrely still, he undermined the stated purpose of his own scheme with the astonishingly imprudent injunction to people to "party on".
This was illustrative of Mr McCreevy's uncoordinated and unsophisticated approach to fiscal policy generally. While some of the 20th century's finest minds devoted their lives to understanding the link between public expenditure and the real economy, Mr McCreevy chose to disregard that sum of human knowledge for the fiscal philistinism of "if I have it, I'll spend it".
During seven long years and an unparalleled boom he had the opportunity to do much. Apart from his pensions fund (on balance probably a good thing), he did little. Most obviously there was no significant modernisation of the State's archaic budgeting apparatus which fails to evaluate or plan spending effectively, causing needless waste of taxpayers' money (today in rich Europe only Greece and Italy have poorer arrangements).
His lack of interest in much needed reform caused the OECD to give over most of its biennial report on Ireland in 2003 to suggesting how international best practice in the management of public expenditure could be implemented. Alas, there's more. Mr McCreevy did little to make the intellectual case against harmonising corporation tax in Europe; he damaged Ireland by deploying pseudo-patriotic bluster against EU criticism of his 2001 budget; he bent rules to help his horsey pals in Punchestown; and he filleted the Freedom of Information Act.
Gravest of all was decentralisation. Far worse than a one-off stroke, the plan is an act of political patronage on a scale unlike anything ever attempted before and will, if implemented, profoundly degrade the capacity for good governance in the Republic. But for all his failings in office, Charlie McCreevy is a decent man and is certainly not the odiously uncaring mean spirit some of his critics claim. He is principled, too. During his party's dark days under Charles Haughey he, almost alone, stood up against the dangerously authoritarian tendencies of the leadership. He was bullied and left to languish on the back benches. If history judges him kindly it will be for this, not his time as finance minister.
• Dan O'Brien is Europe editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. His book, An evaluation of the performance of the State and its institutions since independence, will appear next year