Exclusive extract from 'On the Doorsteps: Memoirs of a long-serving TD' by John O'Leary

Extract from ‘On the Doorsteps: Memoirs of a long-serving TD’ by John O’Leary (Irish Political Memoirs, 2015) courtesy of the author and Irish Political Memoirs

Charlie Haughey’s opponents didn’t have to wait long for another controversy involving the Taoiseach and when it broke I found myself inadvertently at the very centre of one of the biggest storms in Irish political history. What eventually became a serious political crisis erupted in dramatic fashion in January 1992 when the former justice minister and the then Cathaoirleach of the Seanad, Seán Doherty, went on the late-night TV programme Nighthawks and dropped a bombshell. He said there were ministers other than himself at the Cabinet table in 1982 who had known that the phones of journalists Bruce Arnold and Geraldine Kennedy were being tapped and their conversations transcribed. Doherty had accepted responsibility for the tapping at the time but it was always suspected that knowledge of what was going on was more widely known in Cabinet. Doherty had been simmering on the backbenches since he’d had to leave the frontbench as the fall guy from the scandal in 1983, and he had never received any promotion since then.

He was the type of guy who always expected to be promoted so it was perhaps inevitable that he would eventually spill the beans. I also suspected that other senior people in Fianna Fáil who wanted to see the back of Haughey knew what Doherty was planning, encouraged him to go public

 

and were ready to pounce once he began to talk. I didn’t see the programme on the night it was broadcast, but my immediate instinct was that Haughey wasn’t fatally wounded; Doherty hadn’t named him specifically and I expected Haughey to put up a robust defence. I thought the whole thing might blow over. Unintentionally, however, I ended up at the centre of the unfolding political crisis because, just two nights after the Nighthawks programme was aired, a major celebration was held in Killarney, on 17 January 1992, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of my election to Dáil Éireann.

I had been looking forward to my jubilee celebrations although my family had suffered another loss in the days before it was due to take place with the death of my only brother, Danny, at the age of fifty-seven, from cancer. I was glad, however, to be able to focus on a celebration with family, supporters and colleagues. It was a great honour to have served twenty-five years without a break in the Dáil, something not achieved by many in Leinster House. The event, held at the Gleneagle Hotel, had been planned months in advance by a committee of about ten – including Maurice O’Donoghue of the Gleneagle – which had been set up to make the preparations.

Seán Ó Sé, the singer from Coolea, and a band called the Valley Rovers were lined up for entertainment. We initially planned for about six hundred people but in the two days between the Nighthawks interview and the celebrations, there was a big surge in interest for tickets. I think a lot of this had to do with the unfolding political controversy; some people might have expected a public showdown between Seán Doherty and Charlie Haughey and senior ministers, or maybe some realised that Haughey was holed below the waterline and that my twenty-fifth celebrations might be one of the last functions he would attend as Taoiseach.

Some of the guests at John O'Leary's 25th celebrations (copyrighted)

In the forty-eight hours before kick-off at the Gleneagle, I was bombarded with calls from people looking for tickets, even from outside the constituency; Judy’s cousin, Willie O’Brien, brought a couple of carloads of supporters from Cork, for example. But there was also concern in the day or so before the event that some senior figures in the party might not make it to Killarney because of what was happening behind the scenes. On the Thursday evening, the day after the broadcast, I met Brian Cowen in Leinster House and he suggested that some ministers might not be able to make it down to Kerry the following night; there were a lot of rumours and meetings were taking place between key people in the party. One story doing the rounds was that some financial scandal relating to Haughey was about to break.

I was so caught up in planning my twenty-fifth that I had little time to worry about that, and even less to digest what was emerging. On the night of my celebrations, more than two thousand people turned up – it was like a Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis. In the end, the hotel had to serve up a buffet because a sit-down meal was out of the question for so many people. Before the band struck up, I addressed the gathering from the stage and thanked all my supporters for sustaining me in my political life and for their kindness in the three years since Judy had passed away. John O’Donoghue, who had been appointed Minister of State at the Department of Finance in 1991, gave a rousing speech in which he paid tribute to my quarter century of service; he was a great man to give a speech on occasions like that and he always got fired up when he was speaking to our own.

Then it fell to the Taoiseach, as the guest of honour, to say a few words. Haughey paid a glowing tribute to the strength of the Fianna Fáil organisation in Kerry South and he acknowledged the work John O’Donoghue and I were doing in the constituency. He was flanked at the top table by ministers, including Gerry Collins, Ray Burke, Michael O’Kennedy and Mary O’Rourke; it was as if the government had re-located to Killarney for the weekend. He certainly didn’t show any evidence while he was speaking that he was under pressure following the Doherty comments earlier in the week. As it happened, Seán Doherty didn’t turn up; in fact, in the days after the programme on RTÉ, he was nowhere to be seen and journalists couldn’t contact him. So anyone hoping for a showdown between him and the Taoiseach in Killarney would have been disappointed.

The Sunday Independent noted that the Taoiseach was in ‘ebullient’ form at my celebrations. He got a fantastic reception from the party rank and file and the warm welcome he received proved once again how popular he was on the ground despite all the controversy that had surrounded him over the years. Haughey moved around the room pressing the flesh and hugging and kissing supporters. The Kerryman of the following week captured the mood. One supporter, Sheila O’Leary from Knockeenduff, Killarney, who had spent forty years working in England, told the paper that Haughey had great sex appeal and that getting a kiss from the Taoiseach was the highlight of her night. ‘Shaking your hand is the proudest day of my life,’ she told him, ‘I won’t wash for a week.’

John O'Leary with Charles Haughey

Behind the scenes, though, I knew there was a lot of chit-chat around the function room in the Gleneagle about what was happening at the top level of government. The newspapers that morning had been full of reports on what Doherty was alleging, as well as speculation on which other ministers he was implying had been involved in the tapping. I got no sense from talking with the ministers in the Gleneagle that Haughey was about to resign. In fact, I was convinced the Taoiseach would weather the storm as he had done so many times in the past.

There was a strong media presence at the hotel and they were very anxious to talk to him. In his first public comments on what Seán Doherty had alleged, Haughey said it was a ‘total falsehood’ to suggest that he knew anything about the tapping of phones and the subsequent transcriptions. In fact, the controversy of the previous days seemed to have made him even more popular in some quarters – in the days leading up to my twenty-fifth, Jackie Healy-Rae was reported as saying Haughey should keep going as party leader and Taoiseach and ‘to hell with the begrudgers’.

One person who was notable by his absence in Killarney that night was Pádraig Flynn. He had been invited and was due to attend but didn’t turn up. I was chatting at some stage in the night with the Tipperary TD, Michael Smith, who was part of the anti-Haughey faction. ‘No sign of Flynn tonight,’ I said. ‘No, John,’ Smith replied, ‘he is on some very important business tonight and couldn’t make it.’ A few days later, I met Pádraig Flynn in Leinster House; he apologised for not attending my anniversary party, explaining that he had been very busy on the night. I thought little of it; for all I knew he had some problem to deal with in his constituency but, a few weeks later, I learned the real reason why Pádraig Flynn hadn’t been in Killarney.

One night in the Dáil bar, I was told by a senior party figure that, on the night of my celebrations, Flynn had gone to Seán Doherty to help formulate Doherty’s response to the reaction his comments on TV had provoked. I was told that Flynn and Doherty were in cahoots and plotting the downfall of Haughey on the night my party was in full swing in Killarney. The plan was to get Doherty to come out straight and name Haughey as one of those who knew about the phone tapping, something he hadn’t yet done.  

I’d be very much surprised if Albert Reynolds didn’t know what was happening behind the scenes on that occasion; I heard him deny it, but my gut feeling was that he knew well what was going on but it was an alibi for him being seen at my function in Kerry. Reynolds was keeping clear of the whole thing publicly, and that suited him perfectly. In the Gleneagle, in fact, he attracted as much attention as Haughey; he was in great form and spent the entire night on the floor dancing. Though he had resigned as a minister when he supported the motion of no confidence in the Taoiseach a few months earlier, he was still seen as the front-runner to succeed him.  

Though I didn’t believe that the Nighthawks interview itself was the end of Haughey, I knew he was in very deep trouble when Doherty held a press conference on 21 January, less than a week after my twenty-fifth anniversary bash. Doherty said that Haughey was ‘fully aware’ of the tapping and had received transcripts of recorded conversations. It was a dramatic moment. I was now certain that among those transcripts were my conversations with Bruce Arnold which Haughey had interrogated me about in 1983.

He denied the accusations but I think his opponents had more on him. There was talk about a sizeable sum of money from the Middle East which allegedly had made its way to Haughey and there were rumours that this would be revealed if he didn’t quit following the sensational Doherty press conference. I think Haughey would have brazened it out for another while after Doherty put the boot in, but I was convinced there was something bigger of a financial nature about to emerge. Haughey knew it was over; the game was up.

Copyright: John O’Leary, ‘On the Doorsteps: Memoirs of a long-serving TD’ (Irish Political Memoirs, 2015) Available from all good bookshops and irishpoliticalmemoirs@gmail.com