Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (29 page)

‘Was the UCD approach perhaps made at the prompting of the government?' he was asked.

‘No,' Charlie replied. ‘Certainly not.'

The government was criticised for not buying Carysfort when it was offered for sale in August 1989. The asking price then was £8.5 million. The chance was passed up then, but the government provided the money for UCD to buy the college twelve months later for £8 million. In the process £500,000 was saved on the asking price. In other walks of life, those responsible might be complimented, but not in politics. Even when the government gets something right, the opposition will inevitably complain on some pretext or other. In this instance the government was accused of not acting fast enough.

Carysfort was sold for £6.25 million to an individual businessman, Pino Harris. Critics insinuated that the government could have bought it for that price. But would the owners have sold it to the government for the same price? After all the price dropped because the government was not interested. In such dealings people frequently wonder if they might have done better with other tactics, and this case was little different, except that the opposition introduced what might be called the sleaze factor.

On previous occasions some elements of the media would have come to Charlie's defence by pointing out the inconsistencies in the arguments of his opponents. Even during the GUBU period of 1982 when even some of his harshest critics – people like Geraldine Kennedy and Vincent Browne – accepted that the media had been unfair to him, there were a number of editors from whom Charlie could at least expect a sympathetic hearing – people like Douglas Gageby of the
Irish Times,
Tim Pat Coogan of the
Irish Press
and Michael Hand of the
Sunday Independent.

Gageby had insisted on balancing his newspaper's political comments by employing John Healy as a regular columnist. But when Gageby retired, Healy left the
Irish Times
following the appointment of a new editor, Conor Brady, who had been in charge of
The Sunday Tribune
during the GUBU period. Since then there had also been a major shake up in the Irish Press group, now headed by Vincent Jennings, who had caused a sensation in 1982 with his signed editorial in the
Sunday Press
castigating Charlie following the Dublin West by-election defeat. There was no longer any national editor sympathetic to Charlie, with the result that critical stories found a more ready access to the news columns. This naturally complicated an already difficult political situation for him.

When four Fianna Fáil backbenchers issued a joint statement criticising Charlie on 27 September, they received extensive national publicity. Had 24 backbenchers come out in a similar way in support of him, their actions would probably not have received nearly as much coverage as the four who were critical of him. Indeed, only the previous weekend
The Sunday Tribune
had a banner front page headline: ‘Fianna Fáil backbenchers want Haughey to resign as leader'. This was the lead for a story about a survey of 51 backbench deputies by the newspaper on the leadership question. Twenty-four indicated Haughey should stay, and 13 indicated he should go, while the remainder refused to comment. Had only two deputies called for Charlie's resignation, the headline would have been technically correct, but there could be little doubt that it was misleading.

Distortions could be found not only in misleading headlines and the way in which undue prominence was given to critical reports, but also in the biased analyses of political commentators, as well as the uncritical reporting of unsupported – and sometimes unsustainable – accusations made by opponents.

The publication of Garret FitzGerald's autobiography in the midst of the scandals also hurt Charlie. As the first autobiography published by any former Taoiseach, it attracted enormous media attention and comparisons were inevitably made in which Charlie was depicted in a less than flattering light.

When Garret appeared on the
Late Late Show,
for instance, there were a number of pointed references by people in the audience alluding to Charlie's ‘lust for power', and the mysterious way that he had ‘acquired enormous wealth'. Although his name was never actually mentioned, there was no doubt that those people were referring to him, and their snide insinuations on the most popular Irish television programme had an insidious impact by subtly projecting an air of unspeakable sleaziness.

In response to a question from Gay Byrne, Garret explained that his ‘flawed pedigree' remark in 1979 had been taken out of context. He was merely observing that questions had been raised about Charlie that had never been raised about any of his six predecessors.

In his life time de Valera had been blamed for starting the civil war and for deliberately prolonging it. In addition, he was accused of being directly involved in the killing of Michael Collins. Yet by implication, Charlie was now being accused of worse. In a veiled allusion to the Carysfort controversy, Garret complained that the government's decision had been taken without any cabinet memorandum on the subject. This, he depicted, as a complete departure from normal procedure, even though his own government had actually acquired the old School of Engineering from UCD without presenting a memorandum to the cabinet. It was FitzGerald's government which had initiated the move to acquire a new office for the Taoiseach. But Charlie had been pilloried ever since he moved in earlier in the year, because the whole thing had cost so much at a time when hospital wards were being closed throughout the country due to financial constraints.

An official from the Department of Finance produced a report suggesting that changing the plans should cut costs. Among the changes proposed was the scrapping of plans for a fountain in front of the building. Haughey would not hear of the suggestions. ‘Shred them,' he told one of his aides. ‘And the official who made the suggestions.'

The aide did not understand what he meant of about the official who drew up the report.

‘You can fucking shred him, too!' Haughey explained.

A very impressive job was done on the office building, which was variously dubbed the ‘Taj Mahaughey' and the ‘Chas Mahal'. Charlie was disappointed to find, however, that toilet for his office was not en suite. He had to go out in the hall to gain access, and, worse, the toilet was not heated. When he complained, an official of the Office of Public Works told him that the radiators in the hall would heat the toilet. ‘There you are,' Charlie said, flipping the key on the desk in front of him. ‘Try it on the way out, and I hope it freezes the balls off you.'

Many of the accusations being made against Charlie could just as easily have been directed against Fine Gael. At the centre of most was the implication that his friends had ripped off the state and that they would never have had the opportunity, if it were not for his friendship with them. This involved all kinds of unwarranted assumptions. No evidence had been produced that Bernie Cahill or Michael Smurfit had personally done anything wrong. Moreover, it should be noted that both had been appointed to their public positions by FitzGerald's government. In addition, the fraudulent claims made by the Goodman company for export credit subsidies had been made while FitzGerald was in power. His Minister for Agriculture, Austin Deasy, had actually helped to set up the Egyptian deal involved in the initial fraud, though of course there is no evidence nor would we suggest Deasy was aware that the Goodman company was going to engage in any fraud. It should also be noted that Dermot Desmond's company was first hired as a consultant by Aer Lingus, while Jim Mitchell of Fine Gael was the relevant minister. Of course, it would be grossly unfair to accuse any of the Fine Gael ministers of wrong doing in these matters, and it was just as unfair to make such accusations against Charlie.

In Irish society people are entitled to a presumption of innocence, but now virtually all of the media were presuming Charlie's guilt and ignoring all other possibilities. If Fine Gael people were guilty, they would have had a vested interest in setting Charlie up as a scapegoat. Likewise, if businessmen in the so-called ‘golden circle' had been ripping off the country, they would have had good reason to get him out so they could have his successor play down the scandals on the pretext that the man responsible had been ousted and further publicity would be damaging to the country.

The media people should have stuck to the facts and not allowed themselves to be stampeded into a highly personalised campaign. Instead of presenting an unbiased account of events, they went whoring after false demons. ‘The scandals that broke in the summer of 1991 were ones unconnected with him, but once the publicity dam burst, much mud hitherto retained behind the barrier of libel laws and media discretion burst out, and engulfed him,' Garret FitzGerald admitted within hours of Charlie's decision to retire in January 1992. It seemed that even he believed the Taoiseach was an innocent victim of the business scandals.

Charlie was essentially tried and convicted by the media without a shred of firm evidence against him. In a review of the year, Gerald Barry, the political correspondent of
The Sunday Tribune,
noted that ‘no single piece of directly incriminatory evidence has been produced against the Taoiseach'. But the media treated the absence of hard evidence as if it were an irrelevant technicality.

In the Carysfort controversy Charlie and the government were initially condemned for not acting fast enough – for not purchasing the college when it was first put up for sale. Later, when they did act, they were accused of moving too fast and not going through the normal bureaucratic procedures. In short, they were too slow and too hasty. In other walks of life the critics would be told they must pick one or the other, but the media was quite prepared to allow Charlie's opponents to have it both ways.

He opened the confidence debate in the Dáil with a strong defence of his government on 16 October. ‘Irish political life is going through a traumatic period with many disturbing features,' he said. The ‘disclosure of reprehensible behaviour of a small number' of businessmen had been ‘added to, hyped up and exaggerated by a massive campaign of vilification and character assassination of unprecedented intensity without regard to evidence, proof or justification.

‘We have had a campaign of personalised attack by way of unfounded allegation, innuendo, accusations of guilt by association and all the other traditional despicable weapons of such campaign,' he continued. ‘The object of the campaign was nothing less than to undermine and destabilise this government and to damage the credibility of individual members, particularly myself.'

The purchase of Carysfort was ‘an entirely praiseworthy and progressive step,' he maintained. ‘The transaction was carried out in a perfectly straightforward manner and I was not involved in it. I gave it my full support.'

‘I think you gave it more than support,' Ruáirí Quinn said.

‘I defy the deputy to prove anything of that kind,' Charlie snapped back.

Before the debate was even over, however, Mary O'Rourke, the Minister for Education, admitted that she had made the initial approach in the matter to the president of UCD on her own initiative. But Charlie had played a more active role than even she realised. He actually had a couple of private meetings with the head of the UCD School of Business to discuss the acquisition.

Some opponents charged that there was no need for the state to subvent UCD in the whole matter, because arrangements had already been made with business interests to have a graduate business school built at no cost to the taxpayer. Ultimately, of course, the taxpayer would probably have ended up paying an awful lot more, if only by way of taking up the shortfall as a result of tax concessions given to the businessmen. Building a new graduate school from scratch would undoubtedly have cost considerably more than the £9.7 millions that it cost the state to purchase and renovate Carysfort. Moreover it would have been a disgraceful waste of resources, both financial and physical.

On the basis of the evidence produced, Charlie's biggest mistake in the whole Carysfort controversy was his denial that the government had taken the initiative. He should have admitted it. Indeed, he could have been proud of the fact that he had sliced through the bureaucratic red tape.

When Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats went into coalition, it was decided that their programme for government would be renegotiated after two years, and the Progressive Democrats were now threatening to withdraw their support if agreement was not reached before a vote of confidence was taken.

There had been intermittent negotiations throughout the summer and an agreement had appeared imminent when Albert Reynolds walked out of the talks and balked at some final concessions. Charlie had apparently been prepared to concede those, with the result that Reynolds was credited with forcing the Progressive Democrats to back down when they gave in on some of the Fianna Fáil demands at the eleventh hour.

Although the government then survived the confidence motion, there were rumours in Leinster House that Reynolds would lead a heave against Charlie for the leadership of Fianna Fáil within a week. The plan was for Reynolds, Ahern and Flynn go to him and ask for his retirement. If he refused, as expected, they would show him a motion of no-confidence that they would table for the next parliamentary party meeting.

Charlie was worried enough to hold extensive consultations. ‘Why are they trying to humiliate me?' he asked.

Ahern advised him on 22 October to indicate that he had a retirement date in mind. Charlie heeded the advice.

Next day he appealed at the weekly meeting of the parliamentary party to be allowed to quit the leadership with dignity at a time of his own choosing. He talked about a ‘time frame' for his departure. He gave deputies to believe that he wished to complete a scheduled meeting with Prime Minister John Major of Britain in December and attend the EC summit at Maastricht later in the month, as well as oversee the introduction of the budget in January.