Dev got by on very little – so don’t lump him with the present gougers

FOLLOWING the publication of my book, Haughey’s Forty Years of Controversy, I was invited on the late Gerry Ryan’s radio programme. I assumed the interview would be for about 12 minutes. I had done a couple of other interviews with him previously about Éamon de Valera, but we were in separate studios for each of those and had never actually met before.

During the break before going on air, Ryan told me that growing up he had been friendly with Conor Haughey and had often been in the Haughey home at Kinsealy.

Ryan said Charlie Haughey was the first adult who ever asked him for his views on politics. As a result, he said, he had a soft spot for Haughey. All the questions he asked during the interview were about the positive aspects of Haughey’s career. During one of the station breaks after about half an hour, I remarked that I was not uncritical of Haughey.

In fact, the concluding paragraph of my book was: “In the end Haughey probably destroyed his political legacy. It was a great pity because he was unquestionably a very talented politician.”

Gerry said he knew I was not uncritical, but thought there had been enough negative stuff lately and he would like to concentrate on the positive side of Haughey. I had no problem with that. What I was saying on this occasion was not balanced in itself, but it was providing some overall balance.

It reminded me of an interview some years earlier with Kevin Myers on what was then Radio Ireland. As I waited to go on the programme, Myers was interviewing John McColgan, the station’s owner, about listenership figures that had just been published. The station was faring badly, but McColgan said he was happy with the figures.

Myers obviously could not accept that, so a rather combative interview ensured. At the end when I entered the studio, McColgan was gathering his papers and obviously seething. He just stormed out, and Myers – who was actually filling in for Eamon Dunphy – remarked that his days at the station were now probably numbered.

He started my interview with a question about how could I possibly defend something or other that Haughey had done.

I immediately replied that I wouldn’t dream of trying to defend it because it was indefensible. What I had always maintained about Haughey was that he had done some good things. People could justifiably argue that the harm he did more than outweighed the good, but they could only argue this convincingly if they examined the good.

Many journalists had been dismissing his achievements without examining them. That was not history and it was shoddy, biased and lazy journalism.

I found Kevin Myers fair and open-minded. During a break he said he had never seen Haughey in the light in which I depicted him. The interview continued for about an hour. I never heard of any reaction to the programme, but Myers joked – in view of the station’s audience figures just published – that there was probably only a couple listeners anyway.

The subsequent programme with Gerry Ryan also went on for an hour. As the music was playing for the end of the programme, the producer came into the studio and sat down.

“You’re not going to believe it,” she said. The phone lines were melting down: “Get that f**ker off the air!” And they weren’t talking about Gerry Ryan. I was thinking of those interviews following his death.

This week Kevin Myers took issue with Des O’Malley’s suggestion that it was difficult to think Éamon de Valera and Bertie Ahern had led the same party.

I’m afraid Myers may have studied a little too hard at the Tim Pat Coogan school of history. De Valera collected around $5 million in the United States during 1919 and 1920, but he left most of it there. After the Treaty split, the money was impounded and the US courts ordered that it should be returned to the donors in the late 1920s.

De Valera went out to the US to collect money for the formation of the Irish Press and he asked those people to contribute the money being returned by the courts. He retained control of the newspaper and passed it on to his son Vivion, who passed it on to his son, who drove it into the ground.

“For as long as we continue to lie about our past,” Myers contended this week, “our present will continue to be contaminated.”

The Long Fellow made some disastrous mistakes – the cynical way in which he exploited emotions leading to the civil war, as well as the despicable manner in which he used the partition question for his own political ends.

Of course, he can also be blamed for not ensuring that members of his family could never usurp the Irish Press. He should have ensured the newspaper was held in trust to serve the interests of the Irish people as he promised when collecting the money to fund it. Blaming him for setting the example for the current gougers in Fianna Fáil is, however, a perversion of history. When de Valera came to power in 1932 one of his first acts was to cut his own salary from £2,500 to £1,500 and cut his ministers from £1,500 to £1,000. He announced there would be no pay rises. Look at how that contrasts with the pathetic leadership of the current government.

POLITICIANS were not regarded as well paid until Charlie Haughey became Minister for Finance in the late 1960s. When the politicians approached him for a £500 rise, he gave them £1,000 instead because he said he would get as much stick either way.

At the time de Valera was in his second term as president. He requested that his salary not be increased. When he left office in 1973, his salary was still the same as it was when Douglas Hyde became President in 1938.

After more than 54 years as a public representative, de Valera’s pension was to be £1,200 – not for a week, or a month, but for a whole year. He was understandably worried that this might not be enough to support his wife and himself, especially as both were in their 90s and were moving into nursing homes. His retirement was never likely to be a long, expensive one.

In the circumstances, he accepted a pension increase to £5,706, which could be compared with the €112,000 pension accorded to Mary Robinson even though she did not even serve a complete term as president. She baled out early to take a job with the UN.

Comparing de Valera to the present day gougers in Fianna Fáil is grossly unfair. When it came to his salary and his pension, his behaviour was always exemplary. Moreover, he did not have an ostentatious lifestyle. He never owned an island, a yacht or a racehorse. To the best of my knowledge, he never even claimed to have won money on a horse.