Keane’s revelation of affair was Haughey’s ‘most painful’ moment

Charles Haughey’s former press secretary believes the revelation he was having an affair was the “most painful moment” for the former Taoiseach.

PJ Mara described Terry Keane’s appearance on The Late Late show, in which she revealed her 27-year affair with Haughey, as an obvious betrayal.

Mr Mara was speaking on The John Murray Show from Papua New Guinea where he is on business with Denis O’Brien’s Digicel.

He seemed unmoved by the suggestion that Haughey’s affair was a betrayal of his wife.

“He wasn’t the first man that had an affair and it won’t be the last. Men do that, women do that and it’s not something I really want to go into now,” said Mara.

The former senator was on the show to discuss the upcoming three-part series detailing the period of Mr Haughey’s life from his bid for power in 1979 to his attempts to hang onto that power until his departure from politics in 1992.

Aiden Gillen and Tom Vaughan Lawlor, two stars of Love/Hate, have been cast respectively in the leading roles of Haughey and Mara.

Mara described Vaughan Lawlor — who plays crime kingpin Nidge in the RTÉ drama — as a great actor with a reputation nearly as big as Haughey in his prime.

The former spin-doctor expressed his hope that the series would “keep the middle-classes happy” as Scrap Saturday — the show that lampooned him and his former boss mercilessly in the early ’90s did — and that it would be a fair and balanced account.

“I hope it does him justice because he was multi-faceted, he had his faults which everybody knows about but he had huge strength and I hope that those strengths are brought out equally with the fault-finding.”

“It should be warts and all... but it should be all and not just warts,” he said.

Mr Mara also said although the Government is doing “the best they can”, their defeated referendum campaign on the abolition of the Seanad was crude and vulgar and “whoever dreamt it up should be fired”.