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Chapter 1: What is the significance of Charles Haughey's death 20 years ago?
Now, on this day, 20 years ago, Charles Hockey died.
In life, he dominated Irish political life for over four decades. He divided opinion, with some seeing him as the most able politician the country has produced, while others see him as self-serving, vain and a real corrosive stain on the body politic. Where does the truth lie? Well, I'm delighted that Gary Murphy, Professor of Politics at Dublin City University and author of How He Joins Me Now.
You're welcome to the studio, Gary. And it was about 10 o'clock, wasn't it, in the morning on this day 20 years ago?
Yeah, it was a Tuesday morning and he had been sick for quite a while. He had prostate cancer, which had affected him for a number of years. He was 80 at this stage. And yeah, just at about 10 a.m., I think he had been he had slipped into a coma and over the previous 24 hours.
And I mean, like many families, I think, who have that loved one who was dying at home, his family gathered around the bed and literally saw him step away. He had a brother who was a priest, Father Owen Hockey, who died a number of years ago, who was an oblate father in Chikor, and he just got there at the end to say a few prayers, as would normally be the case.
And then he sort of slipped off into the pages of history, as they say.
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Chapter 2: How did Charles Haughey influence Irish political life?
It is two decades, right, since he passed away. And you often see with controversial figures that in the fullness of time, history is kind to them. And you hear that line time and time again. Does it apply to Charles Hoagy?
I'm not sure it does, at least not two decades later. I mean, I spent a very long time thinking about him, maybe too long, and literally every day for the biography I published a number of years back here. And I think he was maybe 15 years dead then when that book came out. And, you know, I do think a lot of people still see him as, you mentioned, self-serving in your introduction, but as
Vain, perhaps profligate. Some people say corrupt. And certainly there's an argument to be made there, although I don't think it's as strong as perhaps other people think. But use the state to enrich himself. So if you take all those things together, I think most people listening might think of him in those terms. And what I try to do in my book, even though
here today, you know, there's much more to all individuals than simply the debit sheet.
Chapter 3: What contrasting opinions exist about Charles Haughey's legacy?
The credit sheet for Hockey is, I think, considerable, but I'm not persuaded that two decades on, and I don't think I'd be persuaded that even another, over the course of the next three decades, a half a century on, his name will be as he might have wanted it to be remembered more fondly, I think, than he is.
I'm looking at a comment here from the Taoiseach at the time of his death, Bertie Ahern. He said of the man that he called boss, Charles Houghy made a huge impact on Irish life over a 35-year political career. I have no doubt history's ultimate judgment on Mr Houghy will be a positive one.
But it is a tension, isn't it, that we see played out, I think, in art, in music, in politics, where you try and separate stories. let's say, the art from the artist or the music from the musician or indeed the policies of a politician from the politician themselves.
There is. And certainly Hockey, a bit like his father-in-law, Sean Lamass, he was a great man for compartmentalisation. He could quite easily compartmentalise the complex parts of his life. So you mentioned like policies versus sort of the individual. Or even take his attitude to his wife, Maureen, who was a marvellous woman who I interviewed on a number of occasions over my research.
And of course, we know that Mr. Hockey conducted a longstanding affair. with the journalist Terry Keane. It's a matter of a public record for quite a long time. But I have no doubt from talking to Maureen Hockey and those close to her that she loved him very dearly and he loved her. And I don't think, you know, and people would say, well, how could he love her?
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Chapter 4: What personal experiences surrounded Charles Haughey's final moments?
He was carrying on a longstanding affair. She was very loyal to him in the end and certainly over the course of the last decade. six or seven years of his life when he was kind of consigned to Kinsele. But he was very, he was well able, as I said, to sort of compartmentalise the different attitudes and different parts of his life.
And on the sort of the corruption question, for instance, many people who gave him money, they're on public record, Dermot Desmond famously said, again on the record, I gave Charlie Haughey a million pounds, it would have been then, and I'd have happily given him a million more.
And I interviewed Mr. Desmond and he told me straight, looked me right in the eye and he said, I gave Haughey money and I expected nothing back from it. And there was a lot of people like that. Now there are others who say the sheer act of taking money from a figure who was involved in business in Ireland... leaves one open to the allegation of corruption.
Certainly the Moriarty Tribunal found three particular parts where they said Cahighi had acted in a corrupt manner. The Cahighi family denied this for quite strenuously and vigorously at the time, and I give them some space in my book for that defence. But I think there's something to it, this idea, as I said, of compartmentalisation.
I mean, he would finish work and go home or he would finish work and go away. And I don't think we get that much more. I think most politicians now are, it's the 24-7 cycle. He didn't think like that, I think.
To speak of Maureen, there's a very interesting quotes from Maureen. It would seem everybody hates Charlie Haughey except the people, right? That's what she said. But is part of his legacy that he did fundamentally weaken trust, public trust in politics and
and politicians, that ordinary people in Ireland to this day who lived through that time feel quite betrayed, I think, by somebody like Charlie Hoy and how he operated.
I think the short answer to that is yes, clearly. I think there was a debasing of a public life by the acceptance of private monies.
Did it recover from that?
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Chapter 5: Does history view Charles Haughey more kindly over time?
And I think there's a mistake made there. I mean, Fianna Fáil would... If you don't mind me saying, pejoratively killed for that type of vote. No, you know, into the 40s. And he was a politician, in my view, that did dominate the sort of the body politic. Himself and Gareth Fitzgerald in the 1980s were in many ways the two titans of that period.
I think he made some very good decisions and I think he made some very poor public decisions, particularly in his early years. Remember, he came to power in 1979 as the result of a close leadership battle in Fianna Fáil against George Cawley. And he never really had the full support of that political party until probably 1987 after Dez O'Malley had left to form the Progressive Democrats.
You talk about those defeats, right? But this was an individual who came back and came back and came back and ultimately, it appears, wanted to be Taoiseach and wasn't going to give up on that easily. Do you think this was a person who was genuinely committed to public service, who genuinely had visionary policies that he thought could improve Ireland?
Or was it an individual who was motivated by ego and power?
I think a bit of both. If that's not sitting on the fence too much, I mean, what's that phrase? There's no fence too high, he can't sit on both sides of it. I think there are some visionary policies. I mean, if you look at things like free electricity and telephone, public transport for pensioners, I I was on the train to Cork last week and it was full of pensioners.
At least I think there were pensioners and I'm nearly that age myself over the next few years. I think things like even the regeneration of Temple Bar, not very far away from the studio here, the IFSC. In that sort of 1987 period, funnily enough, his poll ratings go up, even though there are significant public service, significant cuts to public services.
They're trying to get the public finances under control after he contributed to to the decimation of the public accounts in the early 1980s with profligate spending, when he was telling people that they should have tightened their belts, of course. The pursuit of power, to use the word you mentioned here, was something that was all-encompassing for him.
But I tend to believe very strongly, and I wrote a long section about this in my book, that if you look at the early years, he's born in poverty, in Belton Park Row, where eventually the family moved there. He's born in the west of Ireland in Castle Bar, but it's a bit of a peripatetic existence in his first years.
Scholarship boy to school, scholarship boy to university, trains as an accountant and a barrister at the same time. And I do think that he went into public life to make a difference. Now, he was excited by the trappings of what a public life could give him. And he did like...
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