The Hot Press Interview: Richie Ryan

Richie Ryan was one of Ireland’s most controversial politicians of the ‘70s. Saddled with the misfortune of being Minister for Finance at the time of the oil crisis, as well as some of the worst excesses of the conflict in Northern Ireland, he was dubbed Richie Ruin by the satirical RTÉ TV show Hall’s Pictorial Weekly. It was an unfair caricature, all the moreso given that he was one of the most intelligent and balanced politicians of the era.

In some ways he was a man before his time. He tried to introduce a wealth tax, and for his pains was branded Red Richie by the vested interests in the media. The name stuck and the Government, under Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, backed down. He has nonetheless enjoyed a distinguished career since. He ran successfully for Europe, topping the poll in Dublin in both 1979 and again in 1984 and served as an MEP until 1986 when he was appointed to the European Court of Auditors.
Shortly after he retired at the age of 65, he fell down the stairs in his son’s home and broke his neck. He has suffered from a long-term disability since. But at the age of 84, he retains a formidable intelligence. And he is just as trenchant in his opposition to the mandatory fluoridation of water in Ireland now, as when he sponsored a constitutional challenge to the decision, finally rejected by the Supreme Court in 1964…

WATER FLUORIDATION

Adrienne Murphy: Are you still as concerned about the health risks of fluoridated tap water as you were 50 years ago, when you tried to stop mandatory water fluoridation from becoming law?
RR: Oh yes, certainly. There are major scientific and medical concerns. Yet on the officials’ side there’s an attitude of, ‘Oh well, nobody’s died as a result of it.’ The fact is we don’t know. From an objective point of view, you cannot say that nobody has died as a result of fluoride. People may have died sooner, or they may have experienced chronic malignant consequences of fluoride. I don’t suppose the medical people in a post mortem carry out tests to see what the fluoride content of a corpse is. Most doctors wouldn’t recognise what the symptoms of fluoride poisoning are, unless the teeth are showing signs of dental fluorosis.
The highest rates of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome are all in the world’s fluoridated countries.
Yes. And you could have the situation where a certain percentage of people are lethally allergic to fluoride, as some people are to nuts. And it’s very difficult to get rid of fluoride. It accumulates. I recall being with a group of lawyers 10 or 15 years after the Gladys Ryan case. The group included one of the Supreme Court judges who was involved in the appeal of the case – he went along with his colleagues when they dismissed the appeal – but he said to me, “If, at the time we considered it, I was aware of all that I’ve heard since about fluoride, I don’t think I would have joined the dismissal of the case.” He’s dead now and I don’t think I should name him. But it’s interesting.
Do you think that Aisling FitzGibbon, aka ‘The Girl Against Fluoride’, has a chance with the anti-fluoridation case that she’s taking against the State this year?
I hope she has. I’m sure the Department of Health officials regard her and her team as a blooming nuisance.
Some fluoridationists get extremely angry towards opponents of fluoridation, despite the fact that the public has not given its informed consent to this form of mass medication.
Oh yes – certainly amongst the department of health officials at the time. Sean McEntee, the Fianna Fáil Minister for Health who introduced water fluoridation, was never reticent when he could fling dirt at people. He had one of the sharpest tongues in the Dáil, and he was proud of it.
Have you any sense of the money trail
with fluoride?
No I haven’t really, but the manufacturers of fluoride have probably provided funds to the pro-fluoride people where cases arose where people are opposed to it. I’m sure fluoride manufacturers backed the other side, but I’ve no evidence of it. Of course there are parts of America that don’t have fluoridated water, and places that have managed to stop it, and in Canada too. In places where people had the right to decide, quite a significant number of places have voted against it. Legislation here doesn’t give local authorities or communities the right to object.
Was it disturbing that – by providing expert witnesses for the Irish government – the US government could wield such influence
over the judge’s decision in your anti
fluoride case?
It was annoying. The witnesses who came for the Government’s side were all officials of the US health department. I don’t think there was any independent expert from the US. Whereas the scientific witnesses that we had were recognised as international experts at the forefront in the battle against fluoridation. They gave their evidence, but they had nothing to gain personally.
There have been recent disclosures that Dr. Harold Hodge – the US scientist whose testimony most influenced Justice Kenny – omitted to tell the Irish court that he knew that fluoride, even at low doses, was a neurotoxin, and instead claimed that it was perfectly safe? It was also proven after Hodge’s death, that he had conducted some of the most disturbing human experiments ever performed in the US, including injecting lethal doses of plutonium into hospital patients, against their knowledge?
It’s the kind of thing the Nazis were doing.
Why do you think that so many dentists express such conviction about the safety and effectiveness of water fluoridation, despite contrary international evidence?
It’s a very interesting question. Why would the members of a profession be so much in favour of something, which if true, would destroy their market? It’s very noble on their part to be in favour of something that’s going to deny them a future. But countries that don’t fluoridate don’t have worse teeth. So there really is no need for it.
In the last issue of Hot Press, you stated that you’d recommend to the Junior Health Minister Alex White to look beyond the dismissiveness of the health department officials and the ‘propaganda’ of the Irish Expert Body on Fluorides and Health.
What would you say to Health Minister
James Reilly?
If I were Minister for Health I’d pursue the matter. I’m not sure I’d get cabinet support. I’d certainly try to get objective evidence from people. I’d like to get really objective people, not the panel that the Department of Health recruited to produce a report. It’s a joke. A cover-up. The way they dismiss all the scientific concerns… just rubbish.
What is it going to take to stop fluoridation?
I don’t know… There’s such a solid stubborn block of people who support it. It will be interesting to see how far Aisling FitzGibbon (‘The Girl Against Fluoride’) goes with her case. It would be nice to get the criticism of Hodge noted by the court. You don’t know. You
may hope, you may anticipate – but you may
be wrong.

ECONOMY

Would you have signed the blanket guarantee for the banks in the way that Brian Lenihan did, or would you have ‘burnt the bondholders’?
I’ll answer honestly and say I don’t know! I think I’d be very worried that the people who were advising me were the very people that let the crisis happen. God knows you didn’t have to be directly involved to know that the economy was running astray, and there were going to be terrible consequences. The regulator was really abominably careless. You see there was a division created between the responsibilities of the Central Bank and what was seen as being the welfare of the consumer. And they decided to establish the regulator, whose primary activity was to look after the consumer. It was supposed to be the solution to all our troubles that the regulator would be independent of the Central Bank, independent of government and everybody else. It was a mistake. He did damn all as far as I can see. They shouldn’t have tolerated a situation where Anglo-Irish Bank hadn’t got sufficient reserves to deal with a run. It was appalling. Then the others were all chasing after the Anglo-Irish, because they were all involved in property deals of a very questionable character. So they should’ve seen it coming. What would I have done that night as Minister for Finance? I think I’d say, ‘Well I’ll wait another 24 hours. I’m not going to do this on my own.’ They said there was a whip-around on phones asking ministers. But this issue was much bigger than you could explain in that way to any minister. It would take an hour per minister to explain it. So it was all done in a very short time, rousing people out of their beds.
Critics of the decision say it ushered in another form of colonisation – to lose our sovereign control like that.
We have lost control, because having received the money, we’re bound to fulfil the undertakings we gave that we would conform with what they thought should be done. I was chairman of the board of governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a while, so I know something about its workings. Most people think the IMF has the power to come in of its own accord. It hasn’t. The IMF doesn’t go into any country until it’s invited. And if you invite it, you undertake to observe whatever the IMF may consider to be best for you. So until such time as we have fulfilled all their requirements and we get onto the market and get the money from the market, we’ll have to go along with our undertaking.
What would our other options have been?
Apparently money was leaving the country: depositors were taking their money out and going elsewhere with it. So I can understand why the minister was very concerned by all the big boys from the banking industry coming and saying, ‘Oh, the coffers will be empty tomorrow, it’ll get worse and worse and worse…’ The trouble is, if Ireland hadn’t gone with the IMF deal, it would be very difficult to go to the market and borrow money at a reasonable rate. So I’m afraid you’re on the horns of a dilemma. The pass has been sold already, so we have to see it out.
People feel very resentful that cost of the bank bailout was shifted onto the public’s shoulders.
There’s a perception that it’s the poorer disadvantaged people who have carried the main burden. And it’s been said that the Labour Party has abandoned their political principles and so forth. But there’s been just as strong a disinclination on the Fine Gael side to reduce welfare. It’s a fact that welfare is costly, and unless a government has the income to provide the welfare, it has to borrow.
If you borrow and it’s for current consumption, as welfare benefits invariably are, you don’t reduce public expenditure to any great extent. At the end of the day, and it won’t make any politician popular, but we’ll be a tighter, more efficient nation as a result of austerity. And people will understand more than they did in the past that governments don’t have money other than what they take from the community in taxes.
Do you think the economy is genuinely recovering?
There’s no doubt about it. But it’s not easy. And you’ll always get economic expansion before you’ll get equivalent gains in employment.
What did you learn in terms of economics during the ‘70s that could be applied now?
The situation now is much more difficult. In the ‘70s, the collective wisdom of IMF member states, and that’s all the countries in the Western world and many dependent states as well – was that countries that were affected by the oil crisis and the additional cost of oil should not depress their economies. Instead they should borrow to keep activity going, because there would be massive surpluses from the oil-producing companies, and they’d have to find some way to spend it. So they would make the money available to the consuming states. So there was pressure on all the consuming countries to borrow. Money wasn’t a problem – it was easy to get money at that stage. Nonetheless, you have to pay for the money you borrow. The interesting thing in the ’70s was that the oil-producing countries did not lend to the European countries – to sovereign states. America was supposed to be the great enemy. But they lent money to the banks in the US and elsewhere and left it to the banks to take any risks that might arise.
Had you direct contact with the lenders?
I was sent by a committee of finance minsters of the EU on a mission to the oil-producing countries to tell them that Europe would be ready to borrow off the massive surpluses that they had, but they were resentful of lending money to Europe. I remember one of them said, ‘What happens when Europe falls apart?’ ‘Oh, that’s never going to happen,’ I’d say. To which was replied, ‘The Europeans have had two civil wars in this century, that turned out to be world wars!’ And from that point of view, they were absolutely right. And they said, ‘Why don’t our European neighbours listen to us? We’re just on the other side of the Mediterranean, but instead you listen to the US, which is 2,000 miles away?’ And then they’d say, ‘Tell us about Ireland.’ They had a great love of Ireland. They’d adopt a totally different tone when we came to talk about Ireland. They felt that we were the first people to be de-colonised; we were the first people to nibble at the British Empire and succeed.
So what’s the difference now?
Investors are very reluctant to lend now. And the state of every economy is now public knowledge. There wasn’t the wealth of freedom of public information in the ’70s that there is now. It’s only the Greeks who can hide things now. They hid an awful lot – they shouldn’t have been lent the money they were lent. Rascals! Blatantly misleading about their economic situation, and enjoying it. They shouldn’t have been let into the community in the first place. They were showing growth rates that were false. Their statistics were totally unreliable. I went to Greece with a deputation from the European Parliament, when they had applied to join the community. The purpose of the meeting was to meet the Greek officials to explain the financial workings of the EU, and the operations of the budget control committee – which is like the public accounts committee – that we have to scrutinise all expenditure and so forth. And the Greek officials were laughing! They hadn’t even got the wit to keep a straight face when we warned what would happen if they over-spent, and the controls that would be placed on them, and that they would be punished if they misapplied the money and so forth. They were laughing, and they weren’t even in yet! Bizarre.
One of you most controversial moves during your time as Minister for Finance was to introduce a wealth tax, for which you earned the moniker ‘Red Ryan’.
The wealth tax was to replace death duties. The undertaking of the Government was to abolish death duties and replace it with a wealth tax, which would be paid over the lifetime of the wealth-holder, by a small annual payment. But there was no thanks given to the government or to me for having abolished death duties. When the wealth tax was first published, it was at 2.5% of assets every year. That wasn’t my wish, but I was a minority in the government. The majority was in favour of the 2.5%. But I argued that that would abolish wealth in a decade. And the accumulation of 2.5% over a lifetime would be greater than death duties. There was such a furore that it made the wealth tax unpopular. It didn’t matter at what rate. The government was so appalled at the public reaction that they reduced it down to 1%. But the resentment was there. Meanwhile, yours truly had pleaded with the Government not to put it at 2.5%, in the first place. But a Minister for Finance is only one in a cabinet of 15. It’s the Minister for Finance who gets all the blame, of course! A new tax is always resented. As you know, that’s being said about the raid on depositors’ accounts in Cyprus: now people are thinking that every government is going to do that. It’s a terrible decision. It’s extraordinary.
What do you think of Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan?
I think he’s doing a very good job in appallingly difficult times. It’s easy to criticise the reduction to welfare and everything else. Where’s the alternative? I’ve Shane Ross here as one of the TDs, and he’s a great critic of everything. But he never presents an alternative. The call is for abandonment of austerity and we should go for growth. Okay, but where are you going to get the money? Who’s going to lend money to Ireland and at what rate? If Ireland says, ‘Okay, this is the end of it now, the IMF and European Commission can go to hell, we’re going to borrow money and spend it whatever way we like’ – we just wouldn’t get the money.

EUROPE

What are your views on the euro?
I’m in favour of the euro, but I said at the beginning I felt there wasn’t enough control. We weren’t 27 states at that time, it was only 14, but we had such variation in our economies and banking systems and so on, I felt we needed to have some central mechanism to manage the euro, which was a tremendous undertaking, and was the right thing to do. There should have been better supervision.
Is there an argument for Ireland pulling out of Europe?
People don’t realise the benefits that are flowing to us still from being part of the EU. The markets that we are selling to are huge, and if we hadn’t got those, our economy would shrink, and the problems we have at the moment would be multiplied. We have a massive foreign market that we didn’t have before we joined the European Community. And if we were dependent on the UK for 80 per cent of our market, the UK would dictate the terms. The trouble is that the benefits – which people in business know about – are not understood by the general populace. The opportunity to trade – that is immense. Countries outside of the European Community – the US, Canada, Japan, China – wouldn’t be investing in Ireland if we were outside the community. Ireland is a channel for them to get into the European market: that’s why they’ve set up here.
Will the euro survive?
I think the euro will survive the current crisis. But the European process, it’s very slow; protest and democracy are very quick, but reforms are very slow, because they have to go through the process of convincing people of the unpopular way by which you’re going to give effect to popular demand. And of course politicians wanting to win elections don’t always tell people the consequences. People demand greater and improved services, leaving it to the Department of Finance to find the money. Then they complain about the level of taxes….
People complain if the taxation system
is unfair….
The level of taxes here is not out of kilter with other countries. Denis Healy was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer in the ’70s, and he very famously said, ‘We are going to squeeze the oranges of the wealthy until their pips squeak’. And people were going around this country saying that it was Richie Ryan who said that! It was said to me, and I’d say, ‘I did not say that – I never even repeated it.’ The animosity was there towards me. I didn’t complain at the time and I’m not complaining now, but it’s a feature of democracy that people personalise their objections to individuals. Taxes are not imposed by a particular Minister.
What are your views on the property tax?
I think a property tax is inevitable. It broadens the base for taxation. The old system was one of rates. We’ve forgotten that the rates system existed. It was done away with by Fianna Fáil following the 1977 election, yet the money had to be provided to fund local services. And the motor tax they did away with as well – it was crazy. They both had to be brought back, at a much higher rate.
To what extent do you see the seeds of our current woes in the Charlie Haughey era?
Haughey went on TV to tell the nation we were living beyond our means, but he didn’t bother after that. There was growth in the economy in 1977 of nearly 5%. The government (under Jack Lynch) then borrowed money to inflate the economy! It was a daft thing to do. Then it went out of control. The seeds of the problem were sown when we had the financial crisis in the ‘80s, which need never have happened if we had maintained modest growth. But revenue from rates and motor tax was required. It was ridiculous to abolish them.

NORTHERN IRELAND

You were in government at a time when atrocities in the North were commonplace. What impact did they have on the Republic?
A great deal of our time was monopolised by what was happening in Northern Ireland. There were so many appalling incidents, and one had to react to them. So the policies that that you went into government to perform had to be postponed. It was difficult then and for many years afterwards, to get the British government to understand the problems. Ted Heath was the British Prime Minister. He was quite decent; he was very anxious to understand the problems, and he wasn’t resentful towards the Republic, and didn’t feel that Britannia knew the solutions; he was humble enough, so could understand that there were two sides to the Northern Ireland situation. But inevitably when items were listed on the government agenda, they took second place to the most recent crisis in Northern Ireland, which would demand a reaction on the government’s part, and then media would want a response to whatever had happened. Ministers were more preoccupied
by what was happening in the North than
the economic and financial situation of
the Republic.
Young people have no idea how fraught the situation was at the time.
We thought when we went into government in 1973, ‘Oh great, now we’re going to get so much money from the European Community.’ But the additional security costs, the expansion of the Gardaí and the army, cost more than all the money we were getting from the EEC at that stage. It wasn’t so much the numbers in the army, but you had to expand army barracks and provide new buildings, and all the services that had to be provided to the concentration of security. It was a huge amount. And the Brits were complaining that we weren’t doing enough on security, but proportionately, the cost to the Irish citizen was greater than
the cost of the British operation to the
British citizen.

CONTRACEPTION, THE CHURCH AND CHILD ABUSE

It seems remarkable now that up to the early ‘90s, contraception was only available on prescription. How did you feel in 1974 when Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave, who was Taoiseach at the time, famously crossed the Dáil floor to vote against the contraception bill?
The Cabinet decided there’d be a free vote. When that happened, I heard Cosgrave say, ‘That’s it, a free vote is free vote.’ And I thought, he’s going to vote against it. I was chased by certain members of the cabinet because I was so close to Cosgrave that they thought he’d tell me how he was going to vote. In other words, from early on, they were worried that he was going to vote against the proposals. I didn’t ask Cosgrave, because I knew if I asked him he’d say mind your own business. I didn’t need to ask him. I voted for the proposal. The fact was that the legal situation was that contraceptives were in the country, and people were going to use them, and you shouldn’t make it an offence. You had to deal with the reality of the situation; whether you thought that it was proper or improper was a religious matter. Cosgrave wasn’t the only one who voted against it.
It was a time when the Church still seemed to exert a very influential role in politics…
Oh yes. But when I say yes, there was no direct approach. Nobody from the Church ever phoned me or wrote to me.
In relation to clerical child abuse, how do you explain that it was allowed to go on for so long?
I don’t think we in government had any idea of the problem. The political world was just as misled as anybody. And astonished at the extent of it. It’s appalling to think that the people who had the responsibility of leading the flocks to heaven should be carrying on in that way. It’s destroyed the church. Why should we respect the people who have done this? And at the same time, while it’s appalling the extent, it’s still only a minority of priests who have engaged in it. The ramifications are terrible. Of course we know it’s not peculiar to Ireland. The Vatican has to realise that there’s some relationship between the celibacy of the clergy, the lonely life they have to live, and the abuse of children.

RATING POLITICIANS

How did you rate Liam Cosgrave as Taoiseach?
Cosgrave was a very good chairman. He let everybody have their say, but would remind somebody if they were going on too long that other people had the right to be heard. But when Garret Fitzgerald was Taoiseach, the meetings went on for an inordinate amount of time. Now I wasn’t in government then, but I heard that sending out for chips at midnight wasn’t unusual during Fitzgerald’s meetings, with people there since 10.30 that morning! The problem was that Garret interrupted everybody so the meeting went on and on. He wouldn’t let anybody speak without interrupting.
Why would he interrupt them?
To insert his own point of view, and dismiss whatever was being said by others. Cosgrave was very careful that he didn’t interrupt anybody. Then he’d speak his own mind at the end. The meetings were business-like. They were over before lunch – and often by 10.30am. And Garret’s were going on till midnight. He was intolerant of other people’s views, and over-assertive of his own. A Taoiseach has to give every cabinet minster the right to express a viewpoint. On that account I would not rate him as a good Taoiseach. His mind would be closed. He ran into trouble on more than one occasion because he hadn’t listened. I’d say that in relation to the North, I think he was naïve on many occasions.
That would be counter to the common impression.
I remember at a constituency meeting one night, Fitzgerald had sitting beside him his publicity manager for his own constituency in Dublin South East. Garret was talking about the importance of education – that no matter how difficult, the money would have to be found for education, because if we hadn’t got a high standard of education, we’d end up as a nation of bus drivers. And his publicity manager sitting beside him was a bus driver. The place went into convulsions! And there’s the poor bus driver. Being publicity manager wasn’t his full-time job. He was a very dedicated to Fine Gael. He set up his own security firm when he quit CIE, and then emigrated to New York and set up a security firm there. So here’s a smart guy, even if he was a bus driver and hadn’t had a high education! That’s the kind of trouble Garret would often run into.
What other politicians did you rate highly?
John Bruton was a Junior Minister when I was in the Cabinet. He was very good – very thoughtful – he had very good ideas, and could explain them well. I think he proved himself again in the difficult portfolio of finance. And he obviously impressed his parliamentary colleagues in the European Parliament, because he was chosen as the EU’s first ambassador to the United States. I’m sure there were candidates with ambition to get that post.
How do you rate Enda Kenny?
I’d rate him highly. He’s very like his father, Henry, who was my Junior Minister when I was in Finance. He’d have to step into my shoes if I was away, and when I had to attend meetings in Brussels he was well able to handle question time – and they often tabled awkward questions when I was away. He astonished the press gallery as much as anybody else, because when he was an ordinary TD he was jovial, laidback. Enda can be laidback too, which is a good thing – it’s better than losing the head. But Henry surprised people; he coped marvellously with the financial end. And Enda is very much the same. He’s a very likable person. I don’t know how he performs in the cabinet, but his nature would be to give everybody their say, and he’s highly intelligent.

RETIREMENT

You seem to have a very active life still. What about family?
We have three boys and two girls. One of the girls is in Luxembourg, married with children, and the other is married with children in Cork, so they’re both away from us. The boys are in Dublin. I’ve 11 grandchildren – I think it’s 11 full-stop. And we’ve one great-grandchild. I’m very busy, like most retired people, doing nothing! My wife Mairéad and I love opera; we travel to hear opera, and we go to the National Concert Hall every Friday night. We have a lot of friends. And I’m a member of Probus – it’s an organisation of retired professional and business people. We meet every Monday morning, so that begins my week. On a Tuesday morning, those who are ambulant in Probus go for a walk, which I can’t engage in, because of my disability.
What happened to cause your disability?
I fell down the stairs and broke my neck. It was a couple of months after I retired, in 1995. I was over-nighting in my son’s house, which I’d never been in before, and I got up in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature. The electrics were put in by an odd-job man back in the ’50s, and all the switches were out on the landing. And it was pitch black as it is in the country, with no street lighting. So I was feeling around for the switchboard, and I walked into the stairwell and tumbled down in the twinkling of an eye. I severed my spinal chord. I was in Rehab in Dún Laoghaire for nearly a year. I came out in a wheelchair, and fought back to being on sticks. I’m getting around; I’m able to drive; I have my independence. I was 65 when it happened. I had hoped to tour the world. It was a struggle to accept it, but it’s like playing cards – you have to play the cards you have. The less you accept it, the more painful it is.
Are you aware that Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, a prominent US neurotoxicologist who has researched fluoride, has warned that people who have musculoskeletal pain or arthritic symptoms should avoid fluoride?
Clearly, my disability originally had nothing to do with fluoride – but I may be more disabled because of it (smiles).