2. Risktaker

Chapter twO

risktaker

If things were tight for the Reynolds family in Rooskey, it was the same for most people who lived in the Ireland of 1952. The 1950s are known as a ‘lost decade’ in Irish economic life. The decade was frequently described as one of ‘doom and gloom’. As if to demonstrate this, unemployment and outwardbound emigration continued at a high rate, with 500,000 people leaving the country in the 1950s. In the years 1949–56, the European economy grew by 40 per cent, whereas, in Ireland, the increase was a mere 8 per cent. Ireland was not able to take advantage of the Marshall Plan, the massive American aid plan, to the same extent as countries which had been actively involved in the Second World War, because of the country’s wartime neutrality. Albert Reynolds makes the reality of life plain in his autobiography:

It was a very difficult time in Ireland. The economy was in a dreadful state, there was very little employment and the majority of young people – people of all ages in fact – were still being forced to emigrate to countries across the world: Britain, America, Australia, Canada. My brother Jim was one of them. Joe was running the family farm and business, which provided work for only one person and his family, so Jim left to start a new life first in Canada, then in Australia. But I had no desire to leave Ireland – quite the opposite: I was determined that I would not be forced to leave and that, come what may, I would make my future in my own country.

It would have taken a particularly tough mindset to believe that one could stay in Ireland in the 1950s and make a living. Right up to the early 1970s,

remittances (money sent from abroad) remained a feature of the Irish national accounts, as hard-working emigrants sent home income they had earned abroad to help their families. There was a pervasive fatalism to the 1950s and, in this period, a number of articles and books appeared which seemed to suggest that the Irish race might actually disappear.

Albert Reynolds’ mother, Catherine, was as determined as ever to get the best for her son. She was on good terms with a local bank manager and asked if he would recommend Albert to sit the banking exams. She succeeded in persuading him, which was no mean achievement on her part. Local bank managers were often sparing with their recommendations and inclined to confer such favours on relatives rather than strangers. As late as the 1970s, I remember my mother discussing, with a friend, efforts to get a similar recommendation for her nephew. In the 1950s, jobs in the bank were like gold dust. Ireland’s middle class was a tightly knit group and frequently only mixed with their social equals in local golf clubs and the like. The position of bank manager was one of great influence and often a manager actually lived above the bank branch in the fine, stone-cut buildings that stood out on the main street of many country towns.

In any event, having secured a recommendation, Reynolds dutifully made his way to Dublin to do the interview and sit the exams that might see him become an employee of the bank, in accordance with his mother’s wishes. He took the interview and sat down to do the competitive exam the following day. After the exam, the candidates broke for lunch. While they were hanging around, before sitting down for the second exam paper in the afternoon, Reynolds took in the scene:

I saw some of my fellow applicants walking around, chatting and joking with the interviewers and exam supervisors, and came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time. This was not for me. There’s a saying, ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’ I didn’t know any of them, so I left. To my mind the man who merits the job should get the job, what I was witnessing – or concluded I was witnessing – was a ‘jobs for the boys’ situation. Rightly or wrongly, I thought the decisions had already been made, and that I, as the boy up from the country, the

outsider, didn’t stand a fair chance. There and then I decided I’d make my mark elsewhere. So I did not go back for the second half of the exam, instead I bought the evening paper and started looking for a job.

This story speaks volumes about the emerging personality of the future businessman and politician – he was a risktaker and quite unafraid, to the point of near recklessness, to take his own path, form his own opinion. It may also be that this decision was the action of a headstrong youth up from the country and slightly resentful of the insider networks that can operate in a big city like Dublin. The feeling of not being in the circle, or not having attended the right school, is a feeling often evinced by country people who arrive in Dublin and go to work in professional occupations. Whatever the case, Reynolds decided to walk, perhaps knowing in his heart that this would not play well back at home in Rooskey with his parents. His mother, in particular, he confessed, was ‘devastated’. To add to his difficulties, the friendly bank manager whom she had persuaded to recommend him had written to her to say that Reynolds had done well in the interview and the first exam, and expressed puzzlement as to why he did not go back to sit the second exam. The sense conveyed to Catherine was that her son would have got the job.

What this story illustrates is that Reynolds, even at such a young age, already had the confidence to form his own opinion and the kind of ‘take it or leave it’ personality that would not make him ideal for the sedentary existence of working in the bank. This steely determination and obstinacy are hallmarks of a good number of entrepreneurs and often make them very successful, allowing them not to shrink from the obvious risks of staking their reputation and money on a project. The education he got in Summerhill, the tentative success in making money in the tuck shop and the supportive family upbringing had clearly given Reynolds a self-confidence beyond any formal qualification he had yet achieved. A more conservative youngster would have sat the exams without trying too hard, thus side-stepping any need for parents to apportion blame or express feelings of being let down by their failure. As Reynolds left the exam building, he would have known that he had burned his bridges on the home front and there would be no

easy way back to a financially stretched house, with him, effectively, having thrown his mother’s initiative back at her. Whatever his internal feelings, he quite clearly preferred to make his own way by living on his wits.

His first job was in a hardware store located on Pearse Street in Dublin and he managed to find accommodation in nearby Lower Mount Street. His wages were so low that he had very little left after paying his rent. His brother Jim was a qualified carpenter and would put some extra cash his way, but Jim was set to emigrate soon. Whilst the pay was low, however, the experience was valuable in another way. While working in the J.C. McLoughlin hardware store, Reynolds received the following piece of advice:

I was an office assistant. The old man in charge of the office, Mr Taylor, asked me what I was going to do. At the time I was answering the telephone, doing messages, licking stamps on envelopes and bringing the post down to the local sorting office. Mr Taylor said to me: ‘Young man, if you don’t think where you are going, you’ll be licking stamps for the rest of your life. It is not a question of being someone, but rather choosing to do something, and doing it better than anyone else.’1

It was advice that he never forgot.

His rash move not to pursue the job in the bank had left Reynolds on slim earnings. A friend who rented in the same place as him, heard him complain about what he was earning and managed to procure a job for him in the Pye radio factory in Dundrum on nearly double his previous wages, in spite of the fact that Reynolds didn’t have the necessary qualifications. His job was to French polish the transistors, so it did not matter, on the surface at least, that he was not a qualified carpenter. However, a vigilant shop steward in the factory discovered that he was not a union man and had got the job only thanks to his friend, so he was soon let go.

Reynolds sat a new set of exams, this time for employment as a clerk with Bord na Mona, the state’s turf development board. This job would see him move to Ballydermot in County Kildare, to a huge employment camp set up by the company so that it could extract turf from the biggest bog in Ireland, the Bog of Allen.

The atmosphere in the purpose-built work camp must have been hectic, but it seems that young Reynolds soon began to experience the joys that come with reasonable pay from a big state employer. He and his friends would make regular trips to the nearby Curragh racecourse by bicycle. His love of gambling on the horses started in the most horse-mad county in Ireland: ‘It was here I learned to keep my ears open to the racing gossip as we got to know the various riders and trainers and chatted about the chances of the different horses. Instinct and hearsay served me well and I’d often come away with double my weekly wages.’ To boost his wages further, he took some turf acreage from his employer and worked the bog for extra money. This had the effect of doubling his income. While in Ballydermot, Reynolds also signed up for an accountancy course by correspondence with a college in Edinburgh.

At this point, he was doing his best to get a formal qualification, still perhaps conscious of the advice proffered by Mr Taylor in the hardware store. Reynolds always said that he had learned and self-developed as he went along. In this respect he was an exemplar of an era when both second- and third-level fees were a heavy burden on a family income. His only choice was to educate himself.

Eighteen months after starting at Ballydermot, he was accepted for a permanent position as a clerical officer (Grade 3) at the state railway company and posted to Dromod station in County Leitrim, a mere two miles from his family home. This was a permanent position and, presumably, he was able to cut his overheads by living at home with the family in Rooskey. over the next few years, he was moved to different points in the rail network around the midlands. one particular transfer, to Ballymote in County Sligo, was to prove fateful, as it was there that he met his future wife, Kathleen Coen, a shop assistant in a local drapery store. Reynolds would deliver fabric, which had newly arrived at the station, to the store. ‘Some of the girls used to make faces at Albert behind his back, when he was talking to Kathleen. Albert was so shy, and I would come and stand there until he was uncomfortable and then go. But I didn’t nip it in the bud,’ recalled the owner of the store, Martin McGettrick.2 Reynolds’ landlady of the time remembers him and

Kathleen heading out dancing for their first date, diving into a friend’s car to the strains of a singer called Victor Silvester. Reynolds was clearly happy to settle down and the relationship survived his transfer to Longford station, with him making the journey back and forth to Ballymote to visit Kathleen. Not long after they met, her father died of a debilitating illness and Reynolds had to wait a year before proposing marriage to her, as it was the custom of the time for close relatives to mourn a departed loved one for a full year. In addition, Reynolds was not yet in a secure enough financial position to make a proposal.

Living at home in Rooskey, he had taken on the role as secretary to the Rooskey Carnival Committee, an event started by the local parish priest to raise money to pay off a debt incurred by the parish church. Reynolds, with his family’s experience of running a dancehall, was the ideal man for the role. After two years, the parish debts were paid off and the local priest said Reynolds could continue the festival in his own right if he wanted to.

When his brother Jim returned from Australia in 1957 with some money, the two of them decided to build a bigger ballroom in their native village. There was a loan from the local branch of the Munster and Leinster Bank, with Albert given responsibility for management, bookkeeping and promotion of the business. His brother was in charge of the construction. The business grew. According to Sam Smyth, then a manager of bands: ‘It was a cut-throat business, it was very competitive, it was also – culturally – how boy met girl. From the mid-1950s until sometime into the late ’60s that’s what young people did, they went to a dance, they met, there was no talk of meeting in lounge bars and cabarets, people went to dance.’3

Reynolds hung on to his day job with CIÉ and, in his spare time, booked bands and took his first steps in the music business. Initially, this arrangement worked well. Reynolds’ station master was lenient and Reynolds learned to do his job in three hours, thus freeing up time for him to concentrate on his emerging music business activities. When a less favourably disposed station master arrived and insisted he work the full hours, his life became more difficult and he opted to quit the day job.

The prospect of marriage to Kathleen was making Reynolds more ambitious. His relationship with his soon-to-be bride would strongly impact

on his subsequent success in business and politics. She was to be a huge lifelong source of emotional and practical support, quite apart from bearing him seven children. They married reasonably young and his family remained a stable foundation for him throughout the ups and downs of his different ventures and careers. In this one aspect of his life he was not a risktaker and, in many ways, it was the stability of his family that allowed him to take on all the other risks for which he was to become so well-known.