Economics:Much has been written about Labour's poor showing in the recent general election with everything from affluence to a "brand failure" blamed for its lacklustre performance, writes Niamh Puirséil.
Much of this is hokum but Saving the Future: How Social Partnership Shaped Ireland's Economic Success may give us a few clues. Published in the immediate aftermath of the May election, its timing was fortuitous for Labour - had it appeared weeks earlier it could easily have been used as a manifesto for Fianna Fáil.
We live in an age of consensus. The last election was contested on services and largely peripheral issues because so much is out of the hands of government. Social partnership has taken much of the economics out of Irish politics, while globalisation and EU membership have removed most of the rest.
Stamp duty and co-location are about the only issues left on which to fight. Nevertheless, social partnership is a highly political process, as Saving the Future so clearly demonstrates.
Led by social scientists, analyses of the modern economy and its partnership element have tended to concentrate on policy and outcomes. Less personality driven than historical treatments of economic development in the late 1950s, which often boil over into hagiography (enough already of the "Whitaker revolution"!), it has left us knowing relatively little about the "whos" and "hows" of the modern partnership process.
Saving the Future does a great deal to remedy this. Charting Ireland's progress from Europe's economic basket case through the Celtic Tiger period through the eyes of many of the primary architects and actors in the social partnership process, this book is (as its title suggests) a very favourable account of 20 years of national agreements.
Interviews with the politicians, trade union and business leaders provide the backbone for this study. The unfortunate reticence of those in Irish public life to record their experiences in memoirs (and the unwillingness of those who do to kiss and tell on the policy making process) make studies such as this all the more vital, not least when those interviewed prove agreeably candid in their recollections.
THE DEGREE OF consensus is remarkable. Business leader Liam Connellan, quoted here, once remarked that if a Martian had been present during the NESC discussions in the mid-1980s, they would wonder what person represented which organisation.
It is an observation which comes to mind on many occasions during the book, not least as we are told time and again of how Dr Garret FitzGerald's antipathy towards the unions had prevented a partnership-style deal in 1986 and how the driving forces of the first agreement, the Programme for National Recovery (PNR), were Charles Haughey and Padraig Ó hUiginn. As Siptu's Jack O'Connor puts it, the PNR "would not have happened without Haughey. Full stop. He and Bertie Ahern understood the subtlety of Irish politics".
It is the subtlety of Irish politics that emerges from these pages. For instance, the interviews with trade union leaders further undermine the oft-rolled out argument that the Labour Party's lack of success comes from its close links with the trade union movement.
On the contrary, as this book shows, Labour's problems often arose because the party and the unions were not nearly close enough.
The Irish labour movement suffers from an unfortunate paradox: unable to form a single party government, Labour must coalesce and when it does so, it is usually as a minor partner alongside Fine Gael, a party with little or no sympathy for the trade unions.
This book was commissioned by the pro-partnership public service union Impact, and critical voices, though occasionally alluded to, are entirely absent, although those looking for critiques of partnership will not search long to find them elsewhere.
Judicious editing would have improved the book and removed some of the repetition within and between chapters (we are told of how the fear of Thatcherism spurred union leaders to try to broker a deal in the mid-1980s at least a dozen times). A wider historical and international context would have added depth, and for a study with such a first-hand focus, there is a lack of background or colour on most of the key actors dealt with here. Nevertheless, the book is an illuminating work for contemporary readers and will provide a valuable resource for future scholars of the period.
Niamh Puirséil is a lecturer in the School of History and Archives, UCD. Her book, The Irish Labour Party, 1922-73, was published by UCD Press earlier this year
Saving the Future: How Social Partnership Shaped Ireland's Economic Success By Tim Hastings, Brian Sheehan and Padraig Yeates Blackhall, 239pp. €20