John Bruton, Taoiseach of Ireland who worked towards the Good Friday agreement – obituary

John Bruton, who has died aged 76, was Fine Gael prime minister of the Irish Republic from 1994 to 1997, as peace in the North remained frustratingly out of reach. Apparently in sight when Bruton took office, it would only be achieved on Good Friday 1998 under his Fianna Fail successor, Bertie Ahern.

A farmer from Co Meath, Bruton was conservative on social issues, urging colleagues to consult the Catholic Church before reforming anything. As finance minister, his tough budgetary proposals twice brought down governments headed by his party. Yet while he was Taoiseach, Ireland’s annual growth rate was 8.7 per cent.

Bruton was not a strident nationalist or anti-British; his hero was the pre-partition Irish leader John Redmond. He was the first Taoiseach to recognise the 150,000 Irishmen, North and South, who fought for Britain in the Second World War. And in 1995 he gave a dinner at Dublin Castle for Prince Charles, the first member of the Royal Family to visit since partition.

Bruton compared the IRA to Nazis, and accused them of betraying the Irish people. They had to acknowledge, he said, that “the British presence in Northern Ireland is not the British army or state but a million Unionists.” He told the Dail: “We in the Republic have no agenda for a progressive takeover of Northern Ireland against the wishes of the people there.”

Yet relations with London frayed as he and John Major, their patience sorely tried, differed over how to start all-party talks while the IRA held on to its weapons. The frustration told: in 1995 Bruton told a reporter he was “sick and tired of questions about the f***ing peace process”. Republicans saw profit in waiting for Ahern and Tony Blair to conclude a settlement, as they did after their near-simultaneous elections in 1997.

Bruton struck up a working relationship with Sinn Fein’s president Gerry Adams, vital to bringing the IRA in from the cold. But it deteriorated with the 1996 London Docklands bombing which ended the IRA ceasefire, the shooting of a policeman in Co Limerick and the Arndale Centre bombing in Manchester.

John Gerard Bruton was born at Dunboyne, Co Meath, on May 18 1947, the son of a prosperous farmer. He was educated at St Dominic’s College, Dublin; Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare; and University College Dublin, where he read law. He was called to the Bar at King’s Inns in 1972, but never practised.

Youth secretary of Fine Gael at 19, he was elected TD for Meath in 1969 at 22. Appointed party agriculture spokesman in 1972, he became Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Education next year as Fine Gael took power under Liam Cosgrave, and from 1975 also to the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

Back in opposition from 1977, he was again agriculture spokesman, then in 1981 he found his niche as spokesman on finance, dissecting Fianna Fail’s budget. He had a prominent role in that spring’s election and when Fine Gael took power under Garret FitzGerald he became Finance Minister at 34.

Elected on a promise to cut taxes, Bruton brought in £336 million of spending cuts and a 5 per cent increase in VAT; FitzGerald made them a matter of confidence. At the turn of the year he came back for more with a budget including steep tax increases on beer, petrol and cigarettes and a further rise in VAT; it was defeated by one vote and the government collapsed.

Fine Gael lost the subsequent election, but returned to power in December 1982 with Bruton Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism. He warned against over-optimism about oil beneath the Celtic Sea, and cautioned that Ireland’s per capita debt was twice that of Argentina, Brazil or Mexico; every man, woman and child owed foreign bankers £2,200.

Bruton doubled as Leader of the House, chaired EC industry ministers and in 1985 joined in the first ministerial meeting in Belfast under the Anglo-Irish Agreement. He also took over the Insurance Corporation of Ireland, which had been torpedoed by £120 million of reinsurance deals done in its London office.

In February 1986 he was reappointed Finance Minister. Though he served until that December he never produced a budget, Labour quitting the coalition over his draconian plans to cut Ireland’s foreign debt. After Fine Gael lost the ensuing election, Bruton was defeated for the leadership by the less experienced Alan Dukes. He became deputy leader, and spokesman in turn on commerce and education.

Fine Gael’s humiliating third place in the 1990 presidential election, won by the outsider Mary Robinson, brought Dukes’s resignation. Bruton was unanimously elected leader; he would serve for 11 years. His first action was to call for a referendum on the Republic’s claim to the North, to recognise that the Unionist majority’s consent would be needed.

Bruton went into the November 1992 election with Fianna Fail tarnished by the legacy of Charlie Haughey, forced out that February; he told the voters it was “time to take the country back from the golden circle and give it to the Irish people”. The polls pointed to a Fine Gael victory, but Bruton’s conservatism told against him and voters switched to Labour. Snubbing Bruton, Labour went into coalition with Fianna Fail’s Albert Reynolds.

Colleagues rated Bruton’s performance in opposition lacklustre, and early in 1994 he narrowly survived a no-confidence motion. That May the Dail was suspended as Bruton, following a paramilitary display at an IRA funeral in Dublin, told Reynolds: “We cannot have two armies or two police forces in this state.” He became the first senior politician in the Republic to call for independently verified decommissioning of the IRA’s arsenal.

Bruton was handed the position of Taoiseach on a plate. Reynolds insisted on pushing the arch-conservative Harry Whelehan as president of the High Court despite Labour objections, and the coalition collapsed. Bruton was sworn in on December 15 1994, forming a “rainbow coalition” with Labour and the Democratic Left. He met Adams on his second day in office; five days later, he met Major.

His government prospered despite his supposedly bad relations with the Labour leader Dick Spring; Bruton, Spring and the Democratic Left’s Proinsias de Rossa proved an effective team. Domestically, its high point was the November 1995 referendum on removing the constitutional ban on divorce. To the surprise of many, Bruton clashed with the Church over its claim that ending the ban would weaken marriage, urging a “Yes” vote “for tolerance, understanding and generosity.” The ban was lifted by just 9,200 votes, his intervention proving decisive.

Another success was Ireland’s presidency of the EU in 1996. Bruton helped finalise the Stability and Growth Pact which paved the way for the euro, and unveiled with Jacques Santer, president of the Commission, a draft treaty for European union largely approved at Amsterdam the following year.

Harder to handle were allegations of graft that forced out two ministers. When the broadcaster Frank Dunlop told Bruton that two Fine Gael councillors had asked for a bribe, he replied: “There are no angels in the world, or in Fine Gael.”

In February 1995 Bruton and Major launched the Anglo-Irish “framework document” embodying their countries’ “shared understanding”. Given a standing ovation in the Dail, Bruton termed it “a landmark in the affairs of this island”. But his readiness to abandon the claim to the North led Reynolds to nickname him “John Unionist”.

Weeks later, President Clinton used a White House meeting with Bruton to praise Major and put pressure on Adams. Bruton in turn lauded Clinton for helping bring about Ireland’s first peaceful St Patrick’s Day for a quarter of a century. Back home he criticised Major for being slow to engage with Sinn Fein despite the ceasefire, but warned Sinn Fein that it could not be treated equally with other parties until IRA weapons were surrendered.

In July 1995 Bruton and Major called for all-party talks “as soon as possible”. That November, they launched an international panel to oversee decommissioning, headed by Clinton’s emissary George Mitchell.

Bruton reckoned the Docklands bombing the following February to be a “setback that would be overcome”. He said he would not meet Sinn Fein until the ceasefire resumed, but privately kept in touch. Major proposed elections in the North for a Convention to negotiate a settlement; Bruton saw this as “pouring petrol on the flames”.

With Major, he offered Sinn Fein a seat at the talks provided the IRA delivered another ceasefire; Adams accused him of “permitting the British government to promote a Unionist agenda”. The talks opened in June 1996, Bruton voicing “grave disappointment” that Sinn Fein were not at the table.

Relations were soured by the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s climbdown to allow Orange marchers to parade through a Catholic enclave at Drumcree. Bruton asked Major to explain a decision “which I cannot comprehend and I think was very mistaken”; London termed his comments “offensive”.

Bruton was expected to win Ireland’s 1997 election, and bested Ahern in a televised debate. But while Fine Gael gained nine seats Labour lost 16, and Fianna Fail returned to power. On June 26, Bruton resigned as Taoiseach.

Leader of the Opposition again, he campaigned for a “Yes” vote in the referendum following the Good Friday Agreement, rebuking the IRA for claiming that referenda north and south did not amount to “national self-determination”. This apart, he made little impact, resigning the Fine Gael leadership early in 2001 after a vote of no confidence. Its finance spokesman Michael Noonan took his place.

A keen supporter of European integration, Bruton served on the Convention, under the former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, which drafted a constitution for the EU. Rejected in France and the Netherlands, it was replaced by the less sweeping Lisbon Treaty.

Leaving the Dail in 2004, Bruton became the EU’s ambassador in Washington, the first political heavyweight to hold the post. His priority was rebuilding relations with the Bush administration after the Iraq war. Stepping down in 2009, he applied for the new post of EU President; it went to the Belgian Herman van Rompuy.

Bruton was at various times vice-president of the Christian Democrat International and the European People’s Party, and a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Body. He was awarded the Schumann Medal in 1998.

John Bruton married Finola Gill in 1981; she survives him with their three daughters and a son.

John Bruton, born May 18 1947, died February 6 2024