Letter: John ​Bruton's death reminds us of the decline in standard of politics over past 30 years

Bruton was famous for having an enquiring mind, bursting with ideas. Nothing wrong with people in politics having ideas. Irish politics is often an ideas-free zone but Bruton was irrepressible. I was shocked to hear of his death.

I was in the Dail with him on one occasion for the second stage debate on a bill. The contributions were not exactly electric so he kept passing questions to me. I could hardly keep up.

He has been praised since his death for being a great statesman. Truth to tell, he was in some respects an unlucky politician and we all know what Napoleon said about luck. Napoleon probably didn’t need to add that in life we generally make our own luck and Bruton was, to a certain extent, the architect of his own luck.

The collapse of Garret FitzGerald’s first government in 1982, which was a minority government, was down to Bruton’s decision as finance minister to put VAT on children’s shoes in the Budget. It was not supported by the Dail.

His decision to call an early general election in 1997 was rash. Labour’s losses cost Bruton a second term but my memory of that election is that the Rainbow Coalition was overconfident of winning.

The main reason Bruton has been praised, over and above the fact that he was a highly intelligent man who believed that politics should rise above the pedestrian, was because of his decency and honesty.

It says a lot about how politics has declined over the last 30 years - not just here but more or less everywhere - that Bruton’s death has reminded everyone of the standards we were accustomed to just a generation ago.

Of course we also had Charles Haughey a generation ago, but he was always considered to be an aberration.

Michael Clarke, retired Irish civil servant, Dublin