Comeback commissioner

Ireland’s first female European commissioner trailblazes again.

Those unfamiliar with Irish politics watching the European Parliament hearings for nominee commissioners might have been forgiven for assuming Máire Geoghegan-Quinn had just been plucked from some high-profile ministry back home. “I am a politician, I am not a civil servant. I am into action, we’ve done enough talking, the time is now for action,” she thundered before MEPs. Yet despite the robust performance, the commissioner for research, innovation and science, who was once tipped to be a prime minister of Ireland, has spent the past 13 years in the political wilderness. 

In 1997, she stepped down from Irish politics and her appointment to the European Court of Auditors in 2001 has kept her out of the limelight ever since. Not even during the two recent referendums on the Lisbon treaty held in Ireland was her opinion registered.

But she is now back with a bang. Bagging what appears to be a good portfolio in the European Commission, given the €50 billion budget it commands and the fact that innovation is a centre-piece of the EU’s job-creation plans, Geoghegan-Quinn has been given a second chance to shine. Whether she does shine in Brussels will depend on how committed she remains to a policy area she has no experience in. Maintaining a good relationship with her boss, José Manuel Barroso, will also be crucial, since this is a woman who is fiercely independent and who has not been afraid in the past to stand up to powerful men.

One such man was then prime minister Charles Haughey, who, in appointing Geoghegan-Quinn minister for Irish-speaking areas in 1979, made her the first woman minister since the foundation of the Irish state in 1922.

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She had stood out as articulate and charming since she was first elected to the Irish parliament in 1975 following the death of her father Johnny Geoghegan, who had held the west of Ireland seat since 1954. Her relationship with Haughey later faltered and she was kept out of his subsequent inner cabinets, though she did serve in a junior ministerial role in the European affairs portfolio when Ireland held the EU presidency in 1990. She was part of the faction that ousted Haughey in 1992 as leader of Ireland’s dominant political party, Fianna Fáil. His successor, Albert Reynolds, made Geoghegan-Quinn minister for tourism, transport and communications, and then gave her the high-profile portfolio of minister for justice. One senior Irish journalist remembers her as “formidable and competent” as minister for justice, especially for her courageous decision to introduce legislation decriminalising homosexuality in 1993 in the fiercely Roman Catholic country.

She stood for the leadership of Fianna Fáil when Reynolds resigned in 1994, but withdrew her name on the day of the contest, knowing that her challenger, Bertie Ahern, was sure to win. After newspapers printed details of her son’s expulsion from school (she has two children) and following years of lacklustre support for Ahern while Fianna Fáil served in opposition, Geoghegan-Quinn announced she would not contest the 1997 general election.

Her time in the European Court of Auditors was remarkably low-profile compared with the tenures of previous Irish appointees, who made some effort to keep in touch with events in Ireland. But a former colleague at the court says she was hard-working and respectful of procedures, while allowing experts in her cabinet to get on with the job of auditing. “Her style of working was ‘arms-length’, in that she relied on what auditors in her cabinet were saying. I prefer that to colleagues who audit themselves; members of the court should supervise rather than audit,” says the former colleague. She is also described as having had a “good sense of humour” at the court and being a “good communicator”.

Geoghegan-Quinn’s comeback as Ireland’s first female European commissioner had more to do with political expediency than a sudden rediscovery of her talents. Prime Minister Brian Cowen could not appoint a member of his government since its majority in parliament is too slim. He also knew Ireland had a chance of a better portfolio if he concurred with Barroso’s request to put forward a woman. But that does not make her a second-rate commissioner. “She is competent and interested in the job, unlike her predecessor, Charlie McCreevy. She is also capable of being politically forceful, more so than former Irish commissioner David Byrne,” says one observer.

Fact File

Curriculum Vitae

1950: Born, Galway
1970: Degree in education, Carysfort College
1970-75: Teacher
1975-97: Member of parliament
1977-79: Minister of state for commerce
1979-81: Minister for the Gaeltacht
1982: Minister of state for education
1987-91: Minister for European affairs
1992: Minister for tourism, transport and communication
1993-94: Minister for justice
1997-2000: Writer and journalist
2001-10: Member of the European Court of Auditors
2010-: European commissioner for research, innovation and science

Geoghegan-Quinn has already demonstrated just how forceful she can be, by refusing last month to appoint to her cabinet Deirdre de Burca, a senator from the Green Party, the junior coalition partner in the national government. De Burca afterwards stoked a political storm in Ireland, resigning her senate seat and insisting that the move was a snub to the Greens, which had supported Geoghegan-Quinn’s nomination. But the prospect of having a hard-line Green in a cabinet that will be in charge of giving funding to nuclear research projects and biotechnology projects, possibly including projects on genetically modified organisms, was unacceptable to Geoghegan-Quinn. She was clearly less concerned about offending people back in Ireland over the issue, including Cowen and the Green Party.

Communication is high on the agenda for her role in the Commission, and her time at the European Court of Auditors does not seem to have turned the trained teacher into a technocrat spouting EU jargon. “Talk to any man or woman on the street, they probably wouldn’t know what FP8 or FP7 or FP6 was,” she said recently of the EU’s successive ‘framework programmes’ on research and technological development. “People have to understand what you’re communicating.”

Geoghegan-Quinn has other strings to her bow: she is a published novelist, writing “The green diamond” in 1996, and she penned a political column for the Irish Times. She lists Irish as her mother tongue but admits to having only a “basic knowledge” of French.

She has set her sights high, saying she wants to see the EU take on the US, China and India in turning innovation into commercial success. After such pronouncements and her performance in the Parliament hearings, a lot will be expected of her.