55 Facts About Ruairi Quinn

Ruairi Quinn served as a Teachta Dala for the Dublin South-East constituency from 1977 to 1981 and 1982 to 2016.

Ruairi Quinn was a Senator from 1976 to 1977, after being nominated by the Taoiseach and again from 1981 to 1982 for the Industrial and Commercial Panel.

Ruairi Quinn's family were prominent republicans in County Down in the 1920s, taking an active part in the IRA during the War of Independence and on the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War.

Ruairi Quinn was educated at St Michael's College and Blackrock College, both situated in Dublin, where he was academically successful and an outstanding athlete and a member of Blackrock College's Senior Cup rugby team.

In 1965, Ruairi Quinn joined the Labour Party, working on Michael O'Leary's successful campaign in Dublin North-Central.

Ruairi Quinn travelled in Europe and became a europhile, which was to be a defining characteristic of his political career.

Ruairi Quinn married again in 1990 and has a son with his second wife, Liz Allman, an architect, whose family came from Milltown, County Kerry.

Ruairi Quinn then became an architect with Dublin Corporation in 1971.

In 1972, Ruairi Quinn decided he would stand for the Labour Party in the next general election and hoped he would be the running mate of the sitting Labour deputy for Dublin South-East, Noel Browne.

Ruairi Quinn lost by 39 votes to Fergus O'Brien of Fine Gael in the final count.

Ruairi Quinn was a partner in an architecture firm from 1973 to 1982.

Ruairi Quinn was first elected a Labour Party TD for Dublin South-East at the 1977 general election.

Ruairi Quinn was at this time associated with environmental issues being the first professional architect and town planner ever elected to the Dail.

Ruairi Quinn served as environment spokesperson for the Labour Party and was very close to the party leader, Frank Cluskey, whom he had voted for in the leadership contest of 1977.

Ruairi Quinn lost his seat at the 1981 general election but was elected to the 15th Seanad on the Industrial and Commercial Panel.

Ruairi Quinn was re-elected as TD at the February 1982 general election and would continue to retain his seat at each election until his retirement in 2016.

On 10 March 1991, Ruairi Quinn was observed by Gardai driving erratically in the Clontarf area.

Ruairi Quinn resigned as a minister when Labour left the government in January 1987.

Ruairi Quinn was director of elections for Mary Robinson's successful presidential election campaign in 1990.

In July 1993, Ruairi Quinn adopted a successful employment policy called the Back to Work Allowance, which targeted the long-term unemployed.

Ruairi Quinn presided over the merger of the former Department of Industry and Commerce with the former Department of Labour, with a new focus on enterprise development and reduction of high unemployment levels.

Ruairi Quinn implemented reform of industrial strategy and reorganised the industrial development agencies.

Ruairi Quinn introduced the Community Employment Programme to provide activity and involvement for unemployed workers in 1994, which proved to be particularly successful.

Ruairi Quinn was seen as a moderniser in economic terms, but who tried and failed to close the Irish Steel company in Haulbowline, County Cork.

Ruairi Quinn took a relatively conservative line as finance minister, conscious of his position as the first Labour Party Minister for Finance in Ireland.

Ruairi Quinn quickly proved his competence, dispelling opposition jibes and stock market fears about a social democratic minister holding the sensitive finance portfolio.

Ruairi Quinn served as the president of the Ecofin Council of the European Union in 1996, and worked to accelerate the launch of the European Single Currency, while securing Ireland's qualification for the eurozone.

Proinsias De Rossa of the latter party became the largely symbolic party president, while Ruairi Quinn remained as leader of the party.

Ruairi Quinn used his years of leadership to develop a strong policy platform, publishing a Spatial Strategy for future development of the country, promoting universal access to health insurance, advocating reform of the Garda Siochana, and arguing for closer European integration.

Fianna Fail countered by exploiting Ruairi Quinn's middle-class background, labelling him "Mr Angry from Sandymount," the middle-class district of Dublin where Ruairi Quinn is a longtime resident, and part of the constituency he represented.

Ruairi Quinn fought that election on an independent platform, although he indicated a preference to enter government with Fine Gael, with which he had served with in the Rainbow coalition era.

Ruairi Quinn's strategy was predicated on the Labour Party holding the balance of power and keeping a distance from the two bigger parties.

Ruairi Quinn was disappointed that, even though Labour had not lost seats in net numbers and Fine Gael had lost 23 seats, he had failed to increase the number of seats his party held, in an election that resulted in gains for small parties on the left end of the political spectrum, such as Sinn Fein and the Green Party.

Ruairi Quinn himself was re-elected on the last count by 600 votes.

When Rabbitte resigned as party leader in 2007, Ruairi Quinn supported the successful candidacy of Eamon Gilmore.

Ruairi Quinn eventually backed down after pressure was put on him to give up the pension.

Ruairi Quinn led the European Movement Ireland, a pro-EU lobby group in Ireland until late 2007, when he re-founded the Irish Alliance for Europe to campaign on the Treaty of Lisbon.

Ruairi Quinn is vice-president and Treasurer of the Party of European Socialists.

Ruairi Quinn is a brother of Lochlann Quinn, former chairman of Allied Irish Banks, and a first cousin of Senator Feargal Quinn.

Ruairi Quinn's nephew, Oisin Quinn, was a Labour Party Dublin City Councillor between 2004 and 2014.

Ruairi Quinn was nominated for the post of Ceann Comhairle but was defeated by John O'Donoghue.

Ruairi Quinn became Labour Party spokesperson on Education and Science as a member of Eamon Gilmore's front bench in September 2007.

Ruairi Quinn contributed to the successful second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in September 2009 and continued to be an office holder with the Party of European Socialists.

In September 2010, Ruairi Quinn was appointed as the Labour Party's national director of elections for the 2011 general election by Gilmore.

Ruairi Quinn had been selected along with Kevin Humphreys to be a candidate for Labour in that election.

In July 2011, Ruairi Quinn had again refused to rule out the return of college fees as he acknowledged the funding crisis in the higher education sector.

In October 2012, Ruairi Quinn announced the phasing out of the current Junior Certificate programme over the next eight years, to be replaced by a school-based model of continuous assessment.

Ruairi Quinn described his plan as "the most radical shake-up of the junior cycle programme since the ending of the Inter Cert in 1991", and claimed the scrapping of the Junior Certificate exams would help the "bottom half" of students.

On 12 October 2012, Ruairi Quinn, speaking to an audience at an anniversary celebration for St Kilian's German School, said the "demons of nationalism" and "chauvinism" embedded in our cultures would only stay under control if there was a deeper European culture.

Ruairi Quinn went on to say they "will only stay in the place where they belong if we have more Europe, if we have a deeper Europe, if we have a wider Europe".

On 29 January 2013, Ruairi Quinn launched Ireland's first national plan to tackle bullying in schools, including cyberbullying.

Ruairi Quinn was responsible for the Further Education and Training Act 2013, which replaced the largely discredited state training and employment agency, FAS, with a new statutory body named SOLAS.

On 2 July 2014, Ruairi Quinn announced his decision to resign as Minister for Education and Skills, which became effective following the cabinet reshuffle on 11 July.

Ruairi Quinn said that he would not be seeking re-election to the Dail after the 2016 Irish general election.

Since 2016, Ruairi Quinn has sat on various boards, including as chairperson of the Irish Architectural Archive, and as a director of the Institute of International and European Affairs.