LAST INTERVIEW:ON APRIL 6th last, in a noisy meeting room in an annex of the Leinster House complex, Brian Lenihan gave an astonishingly frank interview on the events surrounding the November 2010 EU-IMF bailout.
Relaxed and at ease, his pleasure at being involved in public affairs was evident not only in his eagerness to tease out even the most arcane points, but also in the amount of time he was prepared to give. The interview, for a BBC documentary to be broadcast just a few weeks later, had been scheduled to last 30-45 minutes. Instead, it went on for more than two hours.
The former minister for finance detailed how events unfolded during those extraordinary weeks in November, described the roles played by the people involved and, most poignantly, spoke of the anguish he felt at the time. As the interview progressed, he was occasionally so frank that – had he not been such an experienced politician – one might have wondered if he had forgotten his words were being recorded.
Mr Lenihan said Ireland had effectively been forced into a bailout, accused some senior members of the European Central Bank of “damaging” Ireland with their media briefings, and claimed the German finance minister had demanded at a meeting in Brussels that Mr Lenihan accompany him to a press conference to announce without cabinet approval that Ireland would seek a bailout.
The number and scope of the revelations in the interview were unexpected, in part because of the fraught circumstances. Mr Lenihan had been the most difficult of all the bailout players to pin down for an interview.
Things had started badly. Both Adele Armstrong, the BBC producer of the programme, and I had met him a month earlier to conduct the interview. That meeting took place in the Department of Finance on March 4th, two weeks after the election and as he was preparing to hand over to the new administration.
When he arrived, long after the scheduled time, he was uncharacteristically flustered and hostile. It was the only time I had ever seen him genuinely angry and fully prepared to show it. Although his staff had agreed to the meeting on his behalf, it was clear he had seen the list of questions only immediately beforehand. And he was furious with what he was to be asked.
He interpreted the questions as an attempt to cast him in a bad light and was particularly irritated by a question that referred to his being part of a political “dynasty”. Given that, with the exception of the dynasty question, almost all the others were the same as those submitted to other interviewees, we were taken aback by the extent of his agitation. And all the more so as he was deservedly known for his courtesy, politeness and unflappability in the face of great pressure and unfair criticism.
After considerable reassurance the documentary was in no way an attempt to ambush or undermine him, the atmosphere changed. He said he felt he could not go on record while still minister for finance, but nonetheless spent almost an hour discussing the bailout with a frankness no other interviewee had demonstrated.
When the on-the-record interview took place on April 6th, the by-then Opposition backbencher was a very different person from the agitated minister of March 4th. He was relaxed, openly proud of having been re-elected and displayed not the merest hint of the suspicion and even paranoia that he showed as the abortive interview of March 4th began. For a man who had just 10 weeks to live, he was full of life and eager not only to describe events as he recalled them, but also to test his memories and ideas about what had happened six months earlier with characteristic intellectual curiosity.
He had very clearly put some thought into what he would say, but at no time in the course of an almost 20,000-word interview did he seek to absolve himself of responsibility for what happened.
More than anything else, he appeared greatly unburdened as the interview began and, by talking so freely, appeared to be unburdening himself further. “I enjoyed that,” he said at the end of the two-hour plus interview.
At the time, it was this unburdening to which I (probably wrongly) attributed his frankness. During most of his three years as finance minister, a wrong or misplaced word by him could have triggered a market panic or even a bank run. To live with that risk and responsibility day in, day out for so long could not have been easy. To be able to speak freely after being relentlessly cautious must have come as huge relief.
In hindsight, however, it seems more likely his motive for speaking so openly had less to do with his newfound freedom from the responsibilities of office and much more to do with setting the record straight, knowing that he might not have many other such opportunities. That, tragically, has proved to be the case.