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Brian Cowen.
2010–2019 CE
Brian Cowen’s Fianna Fáil–Green Party Government entered the year under intense pressure. The collapse of the property-centred boom had devastated tax revenues, construction employment and the balance sheets of Irish banks. Measures announced in the December 2009 budget shaped daily life through 2010: public-service pay reductions, altered social-welfare payments, a new carbon tax and other retrenchment measures reflected an attempt to close a deficit that was far beyond normal peacetime experience. Ministers argued that fiscal correction was unavoidable; opponents disputed both the distribution of the burden and the Government’s handling of the banking system.
2000–2009 CE
In 2009 Ireland confronted the full force of the economic crisis that had followed the property boom. What had initially appeared to be a sharp recession became a transformation of public life: building sites lay idle, businesses retrenched, joblessness rose rapidly and the State assumed responsibilities in banking that would shape politics for years. The Government was led by Taoiseach Brian Cowen of Fianna Fáil, in coalition with the Green Party, while Brian Lenihan Jr, Minister for Finance, became the public face of emergency financial policy. The year’s defining events were not confined to balance sheets. Ireland reconsidered its place in Europe, faced devastating evidence about abuse in Church-run institutions, and saw both the vulnerability and resilience of the Northern Ireland peace settlement.
The year opened under Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach since 1997, heading a coalition with the Green Party and Progressive Democrats. His resignation on 6 May ended an unusually long tenure at the centre of Irish politics, one associated both with the Good Friday Agreement era and with the years of rapid economic growth. Brian Cowen, formerly Minister for Finance and Tánaiste, became Taoiseach on 7 May. He inherited a government with the same Dáil majority but a far less favourable economic environment.
The Northern Ireland Assembly election of 7 March was the first decisive political event of the year. The DUP and Sinn Féin, the largest unionist and nationalist parties respectively, emerged dominant within their own communities. That result mattered because the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 had laid down a route back to devolution, but could not itself compel former antagonists to govern together. The negotiations and statutory arrangements that followed the election brought the parties into a common Executive.
