Category: News

WHEN Fisheries Minister Brendan Daly attended cabinet meetings under the directorship of Charlie Haughey, he arrived on time. He knew better than to be late.

The “boss” held a tight reign on his ministers and he made no secret that there was always someone who could take their place.

“The meetings started on time and if you arrived late you wouldn’t do it again,” said Senator Daly.

The meetings were “electric” and the Taoiseach went through the agenda at speed. He had no time for wasting or time-wasters.

Senator Daly remembers occasions when ministers were sent from the cabinet table back to their departments to solve on-going issues and report back before the end of the meeting on their success. And success it would be because nobody would face Charles J Haughey with failure.

Cabinet sub-committees dealt with any issue that might take up the time of the ministers at the cabinet table. Personnel were called in from outside to assist the committee and were given days to offer a solution or suggestion.

“He kept a very close eye on what was going on in the media. If a minister made a statement that wasn’t with Government policy, they were quickly called in,” said Daly.

But the somewhat controversial Taoiseach also sought advice from the experts when it came to drawing up policy.

Dermot Desmond is believed to have offered the suggestions and ideas that led to the financial services centre. Mr Haughey also brought experts in to address the cabinet on different issues when policy was being decided.

“He was very good at close quarters. If a minister was going to give a statement, he would give a look at it and change around paragraphs to improve it in a matter of minutes.”

Although Senator Daly had known Charles Haughey long before he was elected to the Dáil, he admitted that very few people really knew him.

“He kept an aura around him. I knew very little about him in real life,” he said.

THE late Taoiseach Charles Haughey had envisioned a different future for the acute health services in Clare, one that would no longer have Ennis General Hospital on its present site.

It emerged this week that as Minister for Health and Social Welfare from 1977 to 1979, Mr Haughey had discussed the possibility of relocating the county hospital to Cahercalla with senior politicians in Clare.

In fact, the controversial Taoiseach discussed plans to develop a medical campus on the site, then owned and run by the St John of God Order, which would include a maternity service and psychiatric services.

The Taoiseach visited the county to sanction the development of the maternity unit at Cahercalla. He had also wanted to close Our Lady’s Psychiatric Hospital on the Gort Road.

“He always felt this institution should be closed down,” said Fianna Fáil Senator Brendan Daly.

The west Clare senator, who served under Haughey as minister, said the man who would later become Taoiseach felt that Our Lady’s should never be considered for a general hospital, as he felt there would always be a stigma associated with the site.

During his visit to the county in the late seventies, Mr Haughey visited all three hospitals, Our Lady’s, Cahercalla and the County Hospital, now the Mid Western Regional Hospital Ennis.

Mr Haughey held a strong opinion that the general hospital should have been moved from its current location on the Gort Road.

In the late seventies, the mortuary in the county hospital was used for the majority of funerals and this led to congestion in the town.

Mr Haughey felt an out-of-town health campus would be ideal and felt the best place for such a development was in Cahercalla.

According to Senator Daly, Charles Haughey was also one of the first people to see the potential of a marina in Kilrush.

Himself a keen seaman, on passing the town dump in Kilrush he said to his party colleague, “wouldn’t that be ideal for a marina?”

In the run up to one of his many general elections, Charles Haughey’s mother Sarah was quoted as saying “Cathal always had notions.”

Some of the notions led the former Taoiseach to disgrace, some to changes for the country even Clare. Some remained merely as notions, as with the hospital.

A CLARE man described by his daughter as “a monster who should serve life” has been jailed for seven years for sexually abusing her, her own daughter and her sister.

“I am so glad my daughter was brave enough to come and speak to me about his abuse of her,” the woman told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

She said she had “buried his abuse” for years until her daughter revealed he had also abused her and, as a result, “everything came back to me.”

She then spoke to her sister who said he also abused her as a child. “It became clear we were living with a monster,” she told Judge Michael White.

She said her teenage years were disturbed as a result of her father abusing her and he had destroyed her opportunities in life. Her own daughter had her innocence taken away by him and was “angry and sad” at learning it had happened to her own mother.

“The effects have been massive. He should be jailed for life because he has hurt so many people,” she said.

The 55-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to 14 counts of sexual abuse of his daughters on dates in 1981 and 1983, and of his granddaughter in 1995.

Judge White imposed a total of seven years imprisonment in consecutive sentences and directed that he undergo four years post-release supervision. He also placed him on the register of sexual offenders.

Psychologist, Michael O’Toole, said the man had a limited understanding of the impact his offending had on others.

“It is very hard to get any sense of feeling of emotion from him. He appears to be very shut off from emotion,” Mr O’Toole said.

He thought the man was at a medium risk of re-offending while off alcohol, but would be a higher risk if he began drinking again.

Peter Finlay, SC, for the accused, said nothing he could say “could take away from the cruelty” inflicted on the victims by his client who had instructed him to convey his regret and sorrow for his offending.

FRANK Conway’s autograph book is a veritable who’s who of names.

The common denominator linking all the signatories to the little tome is that they all passed through Shannon Airport.

John Wayne, Victor Mature, Doris Day, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fred Astaire, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Laughton and Laurence Olivier are in Frank’s little pocketbook. So are Muhammed Ali and Charlie Haughey.

Two heavyweights, if in very different ways. Frank met them both and even took a punch in one of his jousts. Not from Ali, who was en route to America after a fight with Henry Cooper in ’67, but from Haughey, who was also going transatlantic.

The punch wasn’t in anger though, more a shadow box because of what happened the day before – February 26, 1985, the day Dessie O’Malley was expelled from Fianna Fáil.

Frank Conway was a member of the National Executive at the time and, along with members from all over the country, was summoned to Dublin for a meeting at which Haughey cited O’Malley, for “conduct unbecoming of a member”.

“It’s him or me,” said Haughey, “And I want it to be unanimous for the good of the party,” he added. Conway was one of only nine out of 82 members to vote against the motion. It was a vote against Haughey.

The following day, Frank was back at work in Shannon when Haughey passed through on this way to New York. “I felt a bit sheepish, I can tell you,” recalls Frank. “They were all clustered around him and then our eyes met across the arrivals hall. I said ‘Here goes Conway, you’re a Fianna Fáil man, go up to him’.

“I moved in and I said ‘Welcome to Shannon Mr Haughey, sorry about yesterday but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do’. He shook my hand and stared. Then he gave me a mock left hook to the right cheek. I was startled.”

There was more to come. Years later, when Frank was back on the National Executive, he walked into his first meeting only to hear Haughey say “Ah there you are Conway, you can’t kill a bad thing”.

“I answered by saying ‘You should know yourself’. He laughed. He had the same glint in his eye the day he gave me that mock punch. I took it that all was forgiven and, a few years later, secured a meeting with him in Government Buildings.

“I was working in Shannon and felt that public relations for the airport shouldn’t be done from Dublin. I got nowhere with him, but remember that he was drinking a cup of tea in a lovely fragile cup, looked up and said, ‘Tell me about Clare, Conway, it used to be such a f***ing lovely place’.”

Haughey’s final act was to sign Frank’s book: “To my good friend forever, Charlie Haughey,” he said.

It put him in there with Ali et al.

GARDAÍ have launched a major crackdown, targetting Limerick criminals who are carrying out crimes in east Clare.

The Clare People has learned that a two-fold initiative, involving the establishment of mobile patrols and setting up static checkpoints, has been mounted in recent weeks.

One garda sergeant and five gardaí have been deployed to the ‘AntiCrime Patrol Unit’ which is based in Ennis, Killaloe and throughout east Clare. In addition, garda checkpoints are being set up every night, in east Clare areas including Killaloe, Sixmilebridge and Cratloe, as part of the campaign.

A number of Limerick people, known to gardaí, have been stopped and searched in recent days, in an initiative which senior gardaí hope will curb rising crime levels in the area.

Superintendent John Kerin said the initiative is part of a major crackdown on crime in Clare, which is being committed by gangs of Limerick criminals.

“The sole purpose is to stop travelling criminals entering Clare, from the Limerick side.

“We found that, through analysis of crime trends, a lot of crime has been happening during the daytime in the Killaloe district.

“Criminals are coming into county Clare from the borders of Limerick,” said Superintendent Kerin.

Gardaí say the initiative is still in its infancy, and it is difficult to pinpoint how effective it will be.

However sources say early indications suggest that crime rates in east Clare are showing a decrease.

Hopes are high that this trend will continue, in the wake of the area experiencing spiralling rates of burglaries over the past year.

“We are concentrating a lot of our efforts in this area at the moment.

“So far this has been effective.

“While it is hard to measure the success of this, crime has decreased, certainly in east Clare and Sixmilebridge,” he added.

“The patrol unit will operate for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Gardaí say the initiative is also targeting drink drivers in the east Clare area, in the face of the growing number of people arrested on suspicion of the offence, throughout the Division.

The initiative was given the goahead by Assistant Garda Commissioner Gerry Kelly.

Funding was allocated, as part of a specialised budget, under Operation Anvil – an ongoing national campaign against criminal activity – following a submission by garda management in Clare. The operation is being conducted by existing garda resources in the Clare Division.

“We will be reviewing this on a monthly basis.

“We are certainly happy with this to-date,” added Supt Kerin.

CLARE County Council is to press ahead with reducing levy charges on promoters of golf courses, driving ranges and small quarries.

At the Council’s Special Policy Committee (SPCC) in Ennis last week, Clare’s Mayor, Cllr Patrick Keane said that the anomalies in the council’s current scheme needed to be addressed.

“There are owners of small quarries and people who want to develop facilities such as driving ranges that are facing unfair financial penalties under the current Developer Contribution Scheme”.

The move by the SPC to signal an overhaul to parts of the Developer Contribution comes after a decision by two Kilkee businessmen to postpone a driving range in Kilkee.

The council required that the applicants pay €35,000 in development contributions to the local authority.

Initially, the council ordered Kevin Haugh and M Talty to pay €103,000. The council admitted that the figure was wrongly calculated and it was reduced to €83,000.

The council then further reduced the contribution to €35,000 after re-calculating the contribution to be given.

In a letter to the council last year, Mr Haugh wrote that €35,000 was still out of the driving range’s financial reach. We were thinking of contributions between €5,000 and €10,000. We have a young family who has moved home from the US and we are hoping Clare County Council can further reduce the contribution sum so that we can remain there in Kilkee and be part of the community”.

However, the council stated that it could not see how a further response could be justified.

CHARLIE HAUGHEY wasn’t even Taoiseach at the time, but that didn’t stop him being made a freeman of Kilrush in 1985. The man who was born in Mayo, of Derry extraction, raised a Dub and an islander off Kerry, was at once a man of Clare.

Honorary citizenship was conferred upon Haughey as part of the centenary celebrations of Kilrush Urban Council on December 13 that year. To the Fianna Fáil leader, who was out of government office at the time, went the honour of wrapping up the town’s year-long centenary celebrations.

“Your success as a politician needs little comment and your work rate as a public representative has been enormous, since you first held public office in 1953,” said council chairperson, Cissie Roughan, at the ceremony.

Responding, Haughey looked at past and present. “During the 100 years which have passed since the first meeting of the council on July 3, 1885, in John Reidy’s house on Francis Street, one is struck very forcibly by the radical changes, economic and social, that have occurred over the period,” he said.

“Not all of these changes were to the benefit of the area. Traditional industries disappeared, leading to large-scale unemployment and heavy emigration. But the spirit of the people of west Clare was not broken.

“The faith in themselves, which the people of Kilrush have continued against the odds, is now beginning to bear fruit,” he said.

THE MAYOR of Limerick has taken a lashing for suggesting that the Limerick boundary should be enlarged to take in Limerick business people living outside the city.

The question of the Limerick city boundary with counties Clare and Limerick has to be resolved, Mayor Diarmuid Scully told the AGM of the Mid-West branch of IBEC in the city on Friday.

Many owners of businesses within the city were unable to vote in city council elections, he said in his after-lunch speech. “There is an inherent danger, because middle-class owners of businesses live outside the boundary, with the businesses inside and the working class inside,” said Mayor Scully. “Who speaks for Limerick city — the Cathaoirleach of Limerick County Council, the Mayor of Limerick or the Cathaoirleach of Clare County Council?” he asked.

“The reality is that the Mayor of Limerick does and the others do not.”

East Clare Labour councillor, Paschal Fitzgerald, said the Mayor “is talking blarney.”

“There are plenty of Clare business people with businesses in Limerick and Limerick people with businesses in Shannon — this is not an argument for a boundary extension into Clare.”

Cllr Fitzgerald said that the Mayor “should go and talk to County Limerick and leave Clare alone.

“That’s what Dick Roche said to do.”

The Mayor also told the AGM that they can expect “fierce” cost competition from abroad. “We haven’t had a good record in attracting large investments to the region from abroad, and we won’t in the future because of costs,” said Mayor Scully.

“We have to compete on innovation and quality of life.”

Damien Clancy, the outgoing Mid-West President of IBEC, handed over to incoming president John Liddy of Roche Ireland in Clarecastle.

In the days immediately leading up to the AGM, one of Mr Clancy’s last presidential acts was to call for the appointment of a Minister for Regional Development.

“Unless Regional Development is prioritised under the new National Development Plan and a Cabinet Minister is made accountable for its overall day-to-day management, the Mid-West Region will end up with unfinished projects that will have serious consequences for our economic development and competitiveness,” Mr Clancy stated.

THE Department of Justice has denied reports at the weekend that it is to instruct gardaí and security staff in Shannon to carry out random searches of flights landing in Shannon.

It was reported that the department would take control of random inspections at the Clare airport, responsibility for which it shares equally with the Departments of Tourism and Foreign Affairs.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it would be inappropriate for the department to comment until the Minister for Foreign Affairs makes any decision.

But she said the information that they were preparing to board flights was incorrect.

Last week a convicted US marine was discovered shacked in a civilian plane in Shannon.

The US embassy said that the soldier who had breached a military code was been flown home from Kuwait, but the US authorities had not cleared the transport of the prisoner with the Irish Government.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern described the incident as “unacceptable” and a “matter of grave concern.”

Following a meeting with the US ambassador, James Kenny, the minsister requested a full report on the incident.

Speculation followed this weekend that the incident with the soldier gave both the US and Irish government “a way out of an uncomfortable impasse” over rendition flights, and an excuse to begin the random search of planes under the Air and Transports Acts.

Last week Clare’s TDs and senators, with the exception of Deputy James Breen (Ind), said they did not feel it was necessary for flights to be searched.

FROM an office in Brussels, Clare’s youngest county councillor, Cathal Crowe, pays tribute to a man he never met; a man who paved the way for the modern Fianna Fáil without representing its modern ethos.

The complexity of feelings of the new generation of Fianna Fáilers towards the former party leader is mirrored only by the life of the late Charles J Haughey himself.

Cathal Crowe was just 10 when Haughey was forced to resign as Taoiseach following revelations that he was aware of telephone-tapping on two journalists. More than a decade of revelations and scandals were to follow, leaving young Fianna Fáilers with first-hand experience only of the later part of the Haughey years.

“For me, he is a character in history. I have to balance the good, the bad and the ugly as I have heard and read them.

And the Clare councillor believes Haughey will be remembered for how he served the country

“In time, when people look at him

as a character in history, the contro versy of more recent years will fall into background.”