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 an 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, on 16 September, 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 was brought up in fairly straitened circumstances on the north side 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 burned 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.

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