Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy Read Free

ways of formulating and implementing policy. Having served in the department under different ministers beginning with Kevin O’Higgins back in the 1920s, Berry 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.
    â€˜He did not interfere in minor details,’ Berry explained, ‘but where political kudos or political disadvantage might arise he was sharp as a razor’.
    The department had often been frustrated by a lack of money until Charlie’s appointment. ‘Successive Ministers for Justice had failed to get the necessary monies from the Department of Finance but Mr Haughey proved very adroit at extracting the necessary financial support,’ Berry noted. He was a good man to cut through red tape.
    Working long hours – on average a ten-hour day – Charlie prided himself on efficiency and getting things done. He could be a good listener, but he became irritable when people became long-winded. He sought to emulate the capacity of his father-in-law to make decisions quickly without agonising interminably over them as had been the practice in the de Valera governments.
    As Minister for Justice, he was responsible for a phenomenal volume of legislation dealing with adoption, extradition, the abolition of capital punishment, the introduction of free legal aid and a number of bills to update the antiquated legal system. In 1964 he introduced the succession bill, a novel piece of legislation designed to ensure that dependents were provided for in any will. This was to prevent a repetition of cases in which the bulk of estates were bequeathed to a church for something like masses while dependents were left virtually destitute.
    As the succession bill was being considered in the Dáil, Charlie was made Minister of Agriculture in place of Paddy Smith, who had resigned in protest over government policy. The move was widely considered a promotion.
    Charlie remained in the new post for two-and-a-half years. Towards the end of his stay things became somewhat stormy, but, following the resignation of Seán Lemass in November 1966, he secured what was seen as the second most important post in the government. He was appointed Minister for Finance by the new Taoiseach, Jack Lynch.
    Although critics often depicted him as an uncaring capitalist, Charlie demonstrated a distinct social concern. He admitted to being fascinated by politics and being lured into political life by his wish to get things done. ‘What politics should be about,’ he once said, ‘is making the world a better place for those you serve.’
    It was he who introduced the farmers’ dole to help the agricultural sector during the winter months, but it was his assistance to pensioners which attracted most attention. His budgets were remarkable for a whole series of novel and comparatively cheap give-aways. Ever mindful of his late father’s plight, he introduced imaginative schemes to help people on the old-age pension, such as free rail and bus travel during off-peak hours, free electricity and free telephone rental, as well duty-free petrol for disabled drivers of all ages. He also won a reputation for himself as a champion of the arts by introducing legislation to exempt the earnings of artists and writers from income tax. Another novel proposal was an exchequer grant of £100 for the birth of triplets, and £150 for quads. The whole thing would not even cost £1,000 in a year, because there were so few triplets born, and he admitted that there was no known case of quads being born in Ireland.
    Some critics dismissed these as gimmicks to win votes. ‘No one will dispute,’ the playwright Hugh Leonard once wrote, ‘that to catch a vote Mr Haughey would unhesitatingly roller-skate backwards into a nunnery, naked from the waist down and singing Kevin Barry in Swahili.’ Yet