CHARLES HAUGHEY served three separate terms as Prime Minister (Taoiseach) of the Republic of Ireland between 1979 and 1992. For almost 30 years he was arguably the central and certainly the most controversial and glamorous figure in Irish public life.

To many he epitomised the new Irish capitalist class, dynamic, ruthless and brash, just like their Irish-American prototype. After his dismissal from Jack Lynch’s Government in 1970 and subsequent acquittal on charges of conspiring to import arms illegally, presumably for use in Northern Ireland, he became the focus within the Fianna Fail party of hardline Irish republicanism. The legacy of this dogged his periods as Taoiseach in that he was deeply distrusted by Ulster Unionists and never realised his ambition to achieve a historic breakthrough on Northern Ireland.

When he became Taoiseach for the third time in 1987 he presided over the necessary cut-backs that provided the essential basis for the dramatic expansion of the Irish economy since the mid-1990s. But prosperity bred corruption, and his final period in office was marred by a series of scandals that pursued him in retirement and culminated in his disgrace and humiliation.

Haughey’s parents came from Swatragh in the Sperrin mountains of East Tyrone and were both active in the guerrilla war preceding the creation in 1921 of the Irish Free State. His father, Seán Haughey, was the officer commanding the south Derry IRA and became a commissioned officer in the Free State Army that defeated the republicans in the civil war. He was stationed in the West of Ireland when Charles, the second of seven children, was born at Castlebar, Co Mayo, in 1925.

Seán Haughey’s career did not thrive after he left the army in 1928. He was dogged by ill-health and died in his forties. The family of four boys and three girls were brought up in fairly straitened circumstances on the Northside of Dublin. Charlie (as he was generally known) went to school with the Christian Brothers in St Joseph’s Fairview where he was a clever student and a good hurler and footballer, if somewhat truculent and hot-tempered on the field of play. He won a scholarship to University College Dublin, where he studied commerce. While there, he was one of the leaders of a crowd of its students who on VE-Day in 1945 burnt the Union Jack outside Trinity College. It was, it should be added, a response to some Trinity hearties who had burnt the Irish tricolour on the roof of the college.

Having taken his degree Haughey went on to qualify as a chartered accountant and practised for a time. Despite his family background on the Free State side he joined the republican Fianna Fail party. In 1951 he married the daughter of its deputy leader, Sean Lemass.

After several unsuccessful bids he was elected to the Dail in 1957. When Lemass became Taoiseach in 1959, Haughey was one of a group of thrusting young men whom he brought into government to replace the veteran republicans who had served under De Valera since 1932. Haughey held the portfolios of Justice, Agriculture and Finance in turn. Incisive and highly intelligent, he rapidly mastered his brief in each department and was not afraid to make bold innovations even in the teeth of advice from his civil servants. He had enviable qualities of clarity and imagination. Succession rights for widows, free travel for pensioners and tax exemption for the earnings of stallions and artists were measures long remembered to his credit.

However, Haughey seemed to disdain the priest-like image of impeccable respectability cultivated by previous Irish political leaders. Although far from handsome, he had a way with women that was legendary. There was about him a whiff of scandal. Rumours abounded of high living and sharp property deals, encouraged by his apparent but unexplained affluence. Small in stature, he bore himself with ceremony and dressed immaculately. He bought a large Georgian house situated in several hundred acres, became a patron of the arts, rode to hounds with the gentry and flirted with their womenfolk.

Yet he remained a man of the people, accepted as one of their own by his North Dublin constituents who were to support him mightily through thick and thin. They recognised in him a kindly, open-handed man capable of genuine compassion for those in need and always as good as his word. But others derided him as abrasive, intimidating, arrogant and crooked.

Within his party, Haughey was distrusted by old guard republicans who could not forget that his father was a “Free Stater” and suspected that Haughey himself was an opportunist with little commitment to their austere ideals.

This was one factor in the failure of his bid to succeed Lemass in 1966 when he was forced to yield gracefully to Jack Lynch. He was apprehensive that in a future leadership contest he would be upstaged by Neal Blaney, a hardline republican from the border county of Donegal.

This may provide an explanation for Haughey’s involvement in the plan to import arms for use in Northern Ireland in 1970. It surprised observers who had never seen him as a hardliner on the issue of partition and recalled that in 1962 he had put down a previous IRA campaign by the establishment of a non-jury military court to try those involved.

The attempted importation led to his dismissal as Finance Minister by the Taoiseach Jack Lynch. At the time Haughey was in hospital as a result of injuries said to have been incurred in some kind of riding accident. He, Blaney and several others were charged with conspiracy to import arms illegally but all were acquitted.