The Irish patriot who expected Santa to visit him every day of the year

CHARLIE HAUGHEY was living proof that Santa came more than once in a year.

Any year, but especially when he was Taoiseach.

So the current incumbent, Bertie Ahern, regrets signing blank cheques for him. He’s not the only one regretting it. I get the feeling he said it only because it was expected of him it in the wake of Moriarty’s view of his relaxed attitude to signing off on behalf of his then leader.

About six months ago, in a graveside oration, the Taoiseach described Haughey thus: “If the definition of a patriot is someone who devotes all their energy to the betterment of their country, Charles Haughey was a patriot to his fingertips”.

Conversely, Moriarty said of him that by taking those payments Haughey “can only be said to have devalued a modern democracy”.

What a patriot!

Possibly the only semblance of truth in Bertie Ahern’s extravagant description was his reference to Haughey’s fingertips — they were everywhere.

Ahern availed of a fairly rare occasion in Irish life to deliver his eulogy — a State funeral that his Government accorded Haughey who, even in death, managed to extort money from the taxpayers.

Instead of quoting from Yeats, as he did, the Taoiseach might have borrowed from Winston Churchill: “I am prepared to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter”.

Haughey was elected Taoiseach three times.

Most politicians would consider elevation to the most powerful and prestigious office in the land to be a signal honour. To him the office was like a cash cow and he milked it for what he thought it was worth. He merely considered it an opportunity to print money.

And he printed millions of it — the equivalent of €45 million in today’s terms, as the Moriarty report pointed out. No wonder Haughey wanted to retain the power of the office — it was his lever for untold riches.

The man was far removed from the real world and he proved it when he had the temerity to tell the rest of us on television in 1980 that we were living beyond our means.

But Haughey couldn’t have done it without the help of others, and there were plenty to ingratiate themselves with him once they knew he was available for ingratiation. Even though Bertie Ahern got only a slight tap on the wrist from Moriarty, he had helped Haughey to enjoy a lifestyle he wasn’t entitled to by signing — without question — blank cheques on the Fianna Fáil leader’s account. Haughey then proceeded to abuse that account, set up with taxpayers’ money, by spending almost €16,000 on Charvet shirts and more than €15,000 on lavish meals in the Le Coq Hardi restaurant.

The Moriarty report found that Bertie Ahern “undoubtedly facilitated the misuse” of taxpayers’ funds by Haughey, although it was “satisfied” he had no reason to believe the account operated otherwise than in an orthodox fashion.

Other individuals are peeved because they figured in the tribunal. They know whether or not they received favours for cash, but either way it was wrong to give money to any public office-holder — never mind a Taoiseach.

It was wrong, just as it was wrong of Bertie Ahern to take a substantial amount of money from wealthy friends when he was Minister for Finance.

For almost 20 years, Charlie Haughey went through about £9.1 million, yet the family described the tribunal’s findings as “perverse”.

In a statement they said the allegations of political corruption and misuse of office were “unfounded”.

Now it’s understandable they would try to defend the family name, but defending Charles Haughey — the Jesse James of Irish politics — is an impossibility.

Where did they imagine all the Charvet shirts came from, not to mind the mansion they lived in at Kinsealy, the island they visited off the Kerry coast, the yacht they sailed in and the horses he and they rode?

The tribunal found he took £9.1 million in cash for favours and from public funds between 1979 and 1996 — or 171 times his gross salary of £53,000 for 1988.

In an eight-page submission which the family made public, they concluded he was entitled to a positive finding that no favours were done in return for the money received by him during the period 1979 to 1996.

THAT pillar of society and financial rectitude, the AIB, was outraged when the now defunct Evening Press carried a piece in 1983 saying Haughey owed them £1 million the previous year.

While the figure might have been slightly awry, there is no doubt the story was substantially correct.

Charles Haughey never doubted there was a Santa living, as he did, in an unreal world far removed from the rest of us.

Unlike the little girl whose implicit trust in a newspaper reinforced her belief.

There the late Taoiseach would have differed trenchantly with her.

On September 21, 1897, the New York Sun published an editorial headed ‘Is There a Santa Claus?’

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the editor and asked if the famous old man really existed, for her father had told her that if she read it in a newspaper, it must be so.

Leader writer Francis Pharcellus Church was given the job of answering Virginia. After dismissing scepticism, he wrote: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

“Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We would have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

“Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve for Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.

“The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody, can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

“You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty — and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

“No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood”, Church concluded.

A happy and peaceful Christmas to everyone.