Doherty’s wife ‘had big role in Haughey bombshell’

SEAN DOHERTY’s wife had a major role in his decision to drop the bombshell that Charles Haughey was fully aware that journalists’ telephones were tapped in the early 1980s, former government minister Máire Geoghegan Quinn has disclosed.

In a major profile of Ms Geoghegan Quinn to be broadcast on TG4 tomorrow night, the former Fianna Fáil TD and Government minister reveals that Maura Doherty encouraged her husband to tell the full truth about the whole affair.

When it became known that the late Mr Doherty, as Justice Minister, authorised the tapping of the phones of two journalists Bruce Arnold and Geraldine Kennedy, he insisted that none of his Cabinet colleagues, including Mr Haughey, were aware of the operation.