One of Ireland’s most successful property developers and the man who told the Moriarty Tribunal he never gave the former taoiseach, Charles Haughey “a penny in his life, or a pound”, has passed away.

Fianna Fáil, Partition and Northern Ireland, 1926-1971

THEY stood side by side, Dev and Dev Óg.

IN going into government Green Party Leader John Gormley suggested that he and his colleagues could aptly be compared to voluntarily putting themselves in straitjackets. “Because when you are entering government,” he said, “you are entering an asylum.”

FORMER Taoiseach Jack Lynch was, as this newspaper editorialised upon his death, “a charismatic leader, political icon and statesman”.

Charlie McCreevy had the courage to move a ‘no confidence’ motion in Charlie Haughey’s leadership in October 1982, but the great majority in the parliamentary party did not have the vision, the guts or the integrity to support his motion, so Haughey survived.

There is the salary of the president and her staff, the cost of the upkeep of the Áras and its staff, providing the president with a car, a driver, and a police escort car, as well as extravagant pensions for former presidents, and ultimately the cost of their state funerals.

MY local TD and grande dame of Fianna Fáil, Mary O’Rourke, has some strange definitions of treason (Letters, January 26).

Michael McDowell refused to release the Justice Department file in line with the 30-year rule ... If McDowell had been in opposition, he would probably have said we were behaving a like banana republic!

The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors is supporting a call for a full inquiry into matters relating to the murder of Garda Richard Fallon on April 3, 1970.

Martin Fallon has a right to feel aggrieved.

FORMER Taoiseach Charles J Haughey turned up at a meeting between developer John Byrne and senior officials of Dublin Co Council, the Mahon Planning Tribunal heard yesterday.

HERE’S a decent sum of money to play with: €54,321,000,000. It looks enormous, in fact, when you write it down that way. Fifty-four billion sounds like a lot, but we seem to have got so used to talking in billions that the sound of the word has lost a lot of its impact.

SOME people have been suggesting that Catherine Butler’s interview in The Village magazine is a Fianna Fáil attempt to rehabilitate Charles Haughey, but publisher Vincent Brown has more reason than anyone to realise that the role played by Fine Gael and Labour in the telephone tapping was the height of hypocrisy.

Former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey made mistakes but had an exceptional political career, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said tonight.

WHEN Charles Haughey was elected leader of Fianna Fáil on December 7, 1979, he had a dark secret.

ECONOMISTS are still optimistic about the Celtic Tiger, but they frequently get things spectacularly wrong. People should therefore beware.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has fulfilled his description of the Cabinet changes as a reshuffle. The changes in ministerial portfolios are the most extensive made by any continuing Taoiseach since the declaration of the Emergency in 1939.

SOME weeks ago I wrote about a persistent rumour that the gardaí involved in the raid on Judge Brian Curtin's home had actually checked with the relevant authorities beforehand and were told to go ahead with a flawed search warrant.

THE most disconcerting aspect of the Barron Report into the investigation of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 was the discovery that material has gone missing from the files of the Department of Justice.

GROWING up in the 1950s one often heard rantings from the pulpit about slave labour camps in atheistic Russia.

IT has long been argued that the best government is the one that governs least, just as the best referee is the one who imposes himself least on a game.

Stormont Enterprise Minister Reg Empey today said: "Is there anybody alive in Northern Ireland who didn’t know that Martin McGuinness was involved with the IRA?