Best Taoiseach of Modern Times

[odlum]

No contest. Enda Kenny is head and shoulders above all of them.

[Nemesiscorporation]

I personally beleive that every Taoiseach Ireland has had in modern times was a waste of genetic material.

[sondagefaux]

Take Fitzgerald's idealism and foresight (minus the sometimes inept naivety), add to it Albert Reynold's unshowy pragmatism over Northern Ireland (and leave out his relationships with Larry Goodman et al), add in Charlie Haughey's work for the arts (and only that about Haughey) and you'd have a damn good Taoiseach.

Top-off with a combination of Mary Robinson and Michael D. Higgins for the ideal President.

[sondagefaux]

As an intellect, a person of conscience, a patriot, a modernizer, a person who did not put his ego before his country or his party, Fitzgerald would bury each and every one of them. Of course, he was not, on occasion, politically astute, but rather took the right decisions and the consequences. Of course that was not appreciated at the time.

His vision of where Irish society should be was decades ahead of his time.

His chief flaw was that his idealism sometimes led him into adopting politically inept and naive stances.

If he had been as good at playing the political game as Haughey, at getting what he wanted, he would have been the best leader of 20th century Ireland.

[oggy]

A Taoiseach that gave us full employment, stopped emigration and peace in the north has to be the best Taoiseach EVER. However, when things went wrong this country was lucky to have the BRAVEST Taoiseach ever, Brian Cowen.

[Future Irish Leader]

Have to say Liam Cosgrave, tried to curtail Ira influence and he tried very hard to cut the deficit despite FF objections. Between him and garret for me but he comes out on top.

[corelli]

His vision of where Irish society should be was decades ahead of his time.

His chief flaw was that his idealism sometimes led him into adopting politically inept and naive stances.

If he had been as good at playing the political game as Haughey, at getting what he wanted, he would have been the best leader of 20th century Ireland.

I always remember that utter contemptuous c**t Haughey coming back from a dirty weekend in Paris, with his mistress at the time, Terry Keane, to oppose the Divorce Referendum on "family" and religious grounds.

[TiredOfBeingTired]

By including Lynch and Cosgrave, you are going too far back and are showing your age.
If, on this Saturday night, you are currently enjoying the pleasures of a fine 18 year old, it is whiskey we’re talking about rather than anything else.

Talking about Enda Kenny is premature.

So I will deal with 1979-February 2011

The FFers.
Albert wins easily.
Not only did the rest damage the country, but they damaged the party.
That could be a separate thread

The FGers
Garrett was a good man but a bad chairman.
His good intentions were lost in endless discussions.
John Bruton is a bit like some old style American Republicans – solid, competent, decent, but not trying to do everything at once.

As others have said, there are no obvious answers.
If the Reynolds – Bruton years had continued, things would be better.
Politics and politics.ie would be a lot quieter.

Can you ask for a poll for this?

[Abacus]

Garret Fitzgerald by a country mile. He had superb political knowledge and a lot of gravitas unlike some of those who came after him. His integrity shone through.

[Ireniall]

Looking at the economy that John Bruton left us in 1997, it's hard to to avoid him at no. 1. Ahern, McCreevy and Cowen proceeded to buy the next two elections and destroy an economy that was growing strongly when they took it over and handed economic power to EU/IMF.

I used to fault the 1994-97 government for managing the economy too conservatively with an over emphasis on controlling expenditure.(Ruairi Quinn was the first Minister for Finance ever to have a budget surplus).

I would criticise them no longer. Oh how we could have done with steady conservative economic policies over the past 13 years.

What kind of stupidity overtook the paddies in 1997 to throw out a government that was giving the best economic performance in Europe to allow in a bunch of charlatans like Fianna Fail and Ahern, McCreevy and Cowen.
.

Just on the Bruton issue-I have an objection.Back when NATO were preparing to stop ethnic cleansing taking hold in Kosovo,after years of near nightly televised Serb atrocity in the preceding Bosnian War,Bruton was given a page in the Sunday Times to condemn the NATO attacks.Incredibly,in his cringeworthy piece, he actually used the words 'the do something about it brigade' in NATO who had pushed for intervention.Imagine that- these people wanted to do something about the return of organised genocide to Europe after what the continent had gone through in the war.
Of course his lack of any intestinal fortitude had already appeared during his time as Taoiseach.When the gutsy little female journalist Veronica Guerin was shot in the knee in her own home as a warning from a bunch of verminous scummers that she had offended while writing for a national newspaper,Bruton sent his justice minister Nora Owen out to declare that 'we shouldn't over-react ' to this apparently on the grounds that this might mean that criminal gangs were dictating justice policy or some similar contortion of language and thought.Poor Veronica,she was on her own.What she needed was a 'do something about it brigade'