Former TD and minister Mary O’Rourke was groundbreaking in so many ways, not least as one of the most powerful women in modern Irish politics during one of the most transformative moments for women in politics here. But her most important achievement is rarely mentioned at all, though it has utterly reshaped Ireland.
That was her role in making sure badly needed infrastructure and supporting policy was put in place that would enable Ireland to be the EU country to most successfully ride the world’s fast-building technology wave around the Millennium.
Many initial pieces for Irish tech success were already in place when O’Rourke took the helm of the Department of Public Enterprise in 1997. But without her no-nonsense push for change, Ireland would likely have ceded the EU and global leadership position it has consolidated in the years since.
This changed the State from being a tiny appendix connected primarily to the UK’s internet backbone, to an independent powerhouse able to offer direct connections to US tech companies
I was writing about the astonishing changes happening here at the time, spoke to O’Rourke many times and knew her civil servants well. She was especially fortunate to have a secretary general with considerable tech nous and vision in Brendan Tuohy. She knew it, too. Crucially, she also saw the transformative opportunity for Ireland.
No other minister would have had the interest, much less stubbornness to push through — only just in advance of the catastrophic Dotcom crash and the later 2008 recession — the first deal to link Ireland directly by undersea fibreoptic cable to the US. This changed the State from being a tiny appendix connected primarily to the UK’s internet backbone, to an independent powerhouse able to offer direct connections to US tech companies.
No other minister then relished learning as much as she did about tech and networks and the internet. This was an area that — I say with confidence — 99 per cent of the government of the time considered dry and boring and did not get. But O’Rourke did. As minister, she doubled down on placing us as far out on the cutting edge of tech as she could.
I interviewed her for a big story for the Guardian in September 1998, heady and formative times for anyone interested in technology and the remarkable tech and economic revolution happening in Ireland.
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I remember the pivotal moment at which it took place. In the space of one week, she had discussed a fibreoptic connection between Dublin and Belfast with then Northern Secretary Mo Mowlam, confirmed her department was chasing then groundbreaking flat-rate internet access for Ireland, and her department had started to draft world-leading encryption and digital signature policy and was planning tax changes to encourage venture capital investment in Irish technology companies.
In that week, she had also launched a drive for public-private partnerships, a new form of investment in Ireland’s communications networks that would deliver the US-Ireland undersea fibre cable deals that, in turn, would attract tech multinationals in successive phases of internet-driven business growth (and, notably, fill Irish tax coffers) for decades to come.
In a global first, Bill Clinton and then taoiseach Bertie Ahern had used digital signature technology from an Irish company the previous week to sign an ecommerce agreement in Dublin.
She formed the committee after reading a Forfás report ... which warned that a special EU derogation that let Telecom Éireann opt out of industry deregulation was stunting telecoms and business growth
All that activity had not been the original prompt for the interview, but the fact that it all happened in the week when I did the interview speaks volumes about O’Rourke’s vision and energy.
I doubt any minister but the formidably amiable O’Rourke could have convinced a stellar group of international telecoms and internet experts, including famed internet pioneer Vint Cerf — who once told me O’Rourke was “a peppy woman” — to become her advisory committee for telecommunications (Act) earlier that year (without pay). Their subsequent report shaped future internet and telecoms policy, though frustratingly, not enough, because other politicians lacked O’Rourke’s initiative and courage.
She formed the committee after reading a Forfás report that same year, which warned that a special EU derogation that let Telecom Éireann opt out of industry deregulation was stunting telecoms and business growth. Two months later she removed the derogation, created the Act, and began work on encryption policy. She told me she had become “evangelical” about digital transformation, recognising the existing, increasingly worrisome political vacuum.
“I do believe this, and now please don’t say this, they’ll be cutting my throat in cabinet, [saying] ‘that one, she’s too smart’. It did need a political leader to get at it. It really, really did,” she said.
Well! I’d like to keep our advice to ourselves. If everyone is going to be at it, we don’t want to give them any special dispensation
— Mary O'Rourke
And she did get at it, pushing through policy and plans at a speed that sometimes left gaps. But she recognised speed was of the essence. If she hadn’t, Ireland would likely have lagged a damaging decade or more behind, and likely be a very different State today.
I closed the interview by asking her if she had any advice for other countries interested in following Ireland’s example. “Well! I’d like to keep our advice to ourselves. If everyone is going to be at it, we don’t want to give them any special dispensation.”
Quintessential Mary O’Rourke, she had me laughing again. But we can’t let the big personality and amusing quips be her only legacy. She deserves recognition as an indomitable minister who, more than any other in her time, crafted an enduring foundation on which Ireland’s subsequent economic and technological success has been built.
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