Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (37 page)

He sought to justify the use of the money in the leader's fund to pay his own household bills because he used Kinsealy for entertainment purposes, and the money given to Fianna Fáil was given to use as he decided. ‘For me as a political person, these were Fianna Fáil's to be used as I saw fit, but given to me as a political leader and because of my work as a political leader,' he argued. He scrapped plans for an official residence for the Taoiseach, thereby saving the state a considerable amount of money.

‘Abbeville would be staffed, manned by people from the Taoiseach's office at weekends because we would be meeting people, receiving deputations, entertaining people, and a whole variety of activities undertaken on behalf of Ireland, the government or the party,' he argued. ‘We would be very active receiving deputations, visitors, individuals from Northern Ireland. Abbeville was ideal from that point of view, because a lot of these people wouldn't like to be coming, facing the glare of publicity in Government Buildings or in Leinster House, and Abbeville had privacy and confidentiality.'

He reacted indignantly to the suggestion that he had misused the money contributed for Lenihan operation. Without even waiting to appear the tribunal he issued a press release refuting any suggestion of misconduct. ‘It was Charles Haughey the leader of Fianna Fáil who initiated and spearheaded the humanitarian project of raising funds that would enable Brian Lenihan's wife and family to take him to the Mayo Clinic in the United States for the life-saving liver transplant operation,' the press release emphasised: ‘The funds raised were properly applied.'

Before the tribunal, he said that the £20,000 given for Lenihan by the IPBS had been mistakenly deposited in the Celtic Helicopters Account, but that this mistake had been quickly rectified. Certainly, the money was taken out of that Celtic Helicopter account the following week, but it was cashed and there was no corresponding deposit in the leader's fund. He had no convincing explanation for how the vast sums of money contributed by IPBS ended up in his account after he had endorsed the two £50,000 cheques made out to Fianna Fáil in 1986. Haughey endorsed all of the cheques and the whole £120,000 was apparently diverted into Haughey's coffers. So, was £85,000 of the £160,000 handed over by Mark Kavanagh and Michael Smurfit in June of 1989.

He could only argued that it was doubtful that he had ever approached Smurfit, but if Traynor was involved, it would have had nothing to do with Fianna Fáil, because he never collected money for the party. But there is ample evidence that he helped Charlie to misappropriate money intended for Fianna Fáil. Over the years, Haughey had demonstrated that he was a prolific liar, even under oath, so little credence could be placed in any of his testimony unless there was evidence to back it up. There was ample evidence over the decades that he could be very generous, and Brian Lenihan certainly did not suffer as a result of any of the misappropriations, because ultimately all of Lenihan's expenses were paid, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Haughey, even if he did help himself handsomely in the process.

‘Why are you saying these things?' Charlie pleaded at the tribunal. ‘Are you trying to humiliate me?'

The tribunal had already identified the donors of at least £155,000 given to Haughey for Lenihan, but only £83,000 of that was used for him. ‘You are wrong, you are wrong, and I think you are trying to make a false accusation, and I reject it,' Charlie told his interrogator at the Moriarty tribunal. He took particular exception to the way in which the media depicted his gift of £200 ‘as a sort of contemptible miserliness on my part ... The fact is that I, to save my friend's life, took an initiative, instituted the raising of funds, all of which funds were spent in his best interests and I did not, and couldn't and wouldn't take one penny of those fund for any other purpose,' Haughey told the tribunal in February 2001.

‘I am certain and I think I will be able to persuade you that all the monies in that fund, all the monies that were raised were dispensed for him, medically or otherwise,' he added. ‘I totally reject, totally reject, here in this tribunal or anywhere else, that for one moment in all those circumstances, a man who was in fact closer to me than one of my brothers, that I would for one moment deliberately have diverted money raised to save his life, to any purpose and certainly not to my own purpose.'

On this occasion, he no longer had the powers of persuasion. A poll conducted by the
Sunday Independent
found that 87% of the people did not believe that Haughey had ‘never touched' the Lenihan money.

In April 2002 Charlie came to a final settlement with the revenue commissioners to pay £5m in back taxes and penalties, in addition to the £1m that he had paid a couple of years earlier. This was an admission that he had indeed received money for his own personal use, but everybody knew that by then. His past had caught up with him.

Charles Haughey was first appointed to a government position in 1960 when he was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Justice by the government of his father-in-law, Seán Lemass, but there was no question of nepotism. The appointment was widely welcomed, and he assumed the task of guiding through a whole raft of legislation. As the Dáil was about to break up in August 1961 James Dillon, the Fine Gael leader, complimented Charlie ‘on the skill with which he has had the recourse to his brief. He has read out to the House learned discourses on various aspects of this legislation which, I have no doubt, will be quoted from the official reports hereafter as evidence of his exceptional and outstanding ability.' Referring to Haughey's ‘carefully-prepared briefs' as a testimony of ‘his extraordinary erudition', Dillon hoped to be as well briefed himself when his own party came to power. ‘Indeed,' he continued, ‘I hope I shall make half as good use of the brief'. This was a significant tribute from the leader of another party just before an election – and even more extraordinary when compared to later remarks by Fine Gael leaders, including Dillon himself.

Having only made it to the Dáil on his fourth attempt in 1957, Charlie headed the poll in 1961 was promoted to Minister for Justice. Again, his promotion was welcomed on all side of the Dáil, and there were no suggestions of nepotism. His promotion was seen as earned.

‘Haughey was a dynamic minister,' Berry recalled years later. ‘He was a joy to work with and the longer he stayed the better he got.' He was quick to master the bureaucratic mystique of the department and the method in which policies were formulated and implemented. Berry, who had served in the Department of Justice under fourteen different ministers beginning with Kevin O'Higgins back in the 1920s, noted that ‘Haughey learned fast and was in complete control of his department from the outset.' In fact, he rated him ‘the ablest' of all those ministers. ‘He did not interfere in minor details,' Berry explained, ‘but where political kudos or political disadvantage might arise he was sharp as a razor.'

He handled the calling off of the IRA's campaign with finesse and was responsible for passing a huge volume of legislation, modernising the country's antiquated legal system. He introduced the succession bill, which ensured that a man had to provide for his wife and children in his will and could not leave everything to the church. In 1964, he was appointed Minister for Agriculture following the resignation of Paddy Smith. During the next two years he worked to build up the national cattle herd, and James Dillon, who prided himself on his Agricultural expertise, rated Charlie as ‘an excellent Minister for Agriculture'.

After Jack Lynch took over as Taoiseach, Charlie was appointed Minister for Finance, and again distinguished himself. The country was enjoying unprecedented prosperity and he had the vision to introduce a number of imaginative yet comparatively cheap giveaways, such as free travel for the elderly. The country was subsiding public transport at the time and this was simply a means of getting something in return for the subsidisation.

In 1970, Haughey was dismissed from the cabinet when he became implicated in the arms crisis. As Minister for Finance, he provided the money to purchase the weapons at the heart of the controversy and he used his statutory powers to instruct to the customs to admit the consignment without inspection. He was subsequently charged with conspiring to import arms illegally and beat the charges in court, because in the view of the jury the Minister for Defence, who had the authority to authorise the importation, was aware and had essentially authorised the importation. But in the course of the trial, Charlie did enormous political damage to himself by taking the stand and contradicting the evidence not only of state witnesses but also his co-defendants. He obviously lied and had to stick to those lies throughout the remainder of his political career.

Charlie made it back into government in 1977 when he was given the poison chalice of the Ministry for Health, but he did an excellent job, securing money to build hospitals and introduced a free hospitalisation for people earning under a £5,000 a year. He also introduced the first law legalising the sale of contraceptives in the country. It was a weak law, but it was a beginning and made it much easier for his successors to introduce amending legislation. Charlie also had the vision to introduce legislation to ban the advertising of tobacco more than twenty years before his British or American counterparts. By the end of his term as Minister for Health and Social Welfare, he was elected Taoiseach, despite the hostility of most of his government colleagues.

Haughey distinguished himself at the Department of Health, which proved a virtual political graveyard for many of his contemporaries. In April 1978 Senior Counsels Thomas McCann and Ronan Keane warned the Eastern Health Board that the practice introduced by the previous government of withholding part of the pensions of medical card holders in nursing home was unconstitutional. The advice was passed on to the Department of Health, but nothing was done. Almost nine years later, on 27 March 1987, Haughey's government authorised a draft bill to regularise the illegal charges, but for some inexplicable reason this was not carried further. In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that the charges were unconstitutional. This left the state facing a bill of as much as €2 billion. If Haughey is to be blamed so could his predecessor and his ten successors at the Department of Health.

Interviewed for the RTÉ television series,
Seven Ages
, Garret FitzGerald stated that Haughey was ‘an excellent minister in many posts – in fact, I think, every position he was in, he was a good minister.' Of course, that did not stop Garret from making his flawed pedigree speech.

Haughey unquestionably achieved more as a minister before his election to Taoiseach than any of his predecessors, or successors for that matter. But his first two terms as Taoiseach were little short of disastrous. He recognised that the country was living way beyond its means, but he only made the situation worse. In 1982, he presided over a short-live government that became synonymous with GUBU, as a result of a whole series of grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented events. In opposition, he led Fianna Fáil during a particularly destructive period, in which he put his own political welfare above the welfare of the country, going as far as trying to wreck the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. He also sought to purge the party of his opponents, which probably cost him an overall majority in 1987.

As Taoiseach, he was sometimes woefully misdirected, but he nevertheless led a government that is generally credited with achieving a virtual economic miracle in turning a near bankrupt economy around in the late 1980s. He laid the foundations of the Celtic Tiger economy and was the politician most associated with the introduction of the Financial Service Centre, which proved a phenomenal success.

Even Charlie McCreevy, the man who was so critical of the auction politics and Haughey's economic performance during his first two terms as Taoiseach, later credited him with reforming the economy after returning to power in 1987.

‘To Mr Haughey's eternal credit,' McCreevy stated in July 2003, ‘he will always be remembered as the man who turned the country around. Because we were bankrupt. We were the next case for the International Monetary Fund. There may be lots of things that Mr Haughey did that people could not approve of but he turned this country around.'

He also played a considerable part in the early stages of the peace initiative in Northern Ireland. ‘As Taoiseach, he played a major role in the peace process,' John Hume explained. ‘When I began my dialogue with Gerry Adams I privately and confidentially informed him and I kept him regularly informed and he was very supportive. Our object was to get a joint declaration from the British and Irish governments. He worked closely with me to prepare what that declaration should be and he also worked very closely with John Major. That Joint Declaration, which was finally announced by John Major and Albert Reynolds led directly to the ceasefire.'

All too often people who seek to assess Haughey's legacy do so without examining his achievements. They just say that his personal avarice destroyed everything he accomplished. That might be a fair assessment, but only if they first consider his achievements.

While in power Charlie undoubtedly achieved much more than Garret FitzGerald. During little over four years in power, for instance, Haughey's government turned the economy around, while it got worse during FitzGerald's comparatively similar period in power. Garret promised a constitutional crusade to change the constitution and laws in order to convince northern Protestants that they had nothing to fear from the south, as it had become a modern pluralist society. He envisaged constitutional changes to drop the proscription on divorce and deal with what the Unionists considered the offensive implications of Articles 2 and 3.

Haughey denounced the suggestion of currying favour with the Unionists. He told a Fianna Fáil meeting on 17 October 1981 that any changes in the constitution ‘should be undertaken on their merit, not with a view to impressing northern Unionists, the British, or anybody else.' Complaining that FitzGerald's constitutional crusade was ‘unnecessary, divisive and unhelpful,' Charlie added that it was ‘the first time in history that a crusade was started by the infidels.'