Dublin Report Pre-Celtic Tiger, corruption was economy’s fuel

By John Kelly

Almost every Irish journalist who has a third class degree in classics from Trinity College apparently knows about Charles Haughey, the Arms Trial, and Neil Blaney.

They even believe they know what the Mohair Suit Brigade means. But they know nothing little or nothing about TACA nor its origins, which is not to mention the sole and original begetter of the title.

One reads every day of people who are critical of bungalows in rural Ireland, the travesties of local planning and the growth of the so-called, badly described "Celtic Tiger." Some of their ill-defined, condescending criticism reminiscent of the late Brendan Behan. He reserved some very colorful descriptions for Irish begrudgery. Unfortunately, they cannot be quoted in what is still a family newspaper.

Let’s just say that he had little time for the unspeakable Irish begrudgers, especially the unique brand that emanated from the sanctified groves of alleged Irish academia, only to repeat the cant handed down by their accepted intellectual and social peers.

It’s nice to be nice, nicer still to be respectable, and nicest of all to realize that one is always on the side of the politically correct.

But what ever has happened to the real Irish rebels of the mid-20th century?

These were the people who defied what was regarded as being "correct" in their own time, people like the aforementioned Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Brian O’Nullain, otherwise known as "Myles na gCopaleen," and, of course, that uproarious American scholarship G.I., otherwise known as J.P. Donleavy?

The astounding fact is that Haughey would have found himself most at home in their company. They were rogues and chancers in certain ways. Without remorse, or the quaver of a quarter of a volt of conscience, they cadged from all who seemed capable enough to afford it.

They did this relentlessly. And they did it pragmatically.

The late, great Paddy Kavanagh, former poet of the burgling hills of Monaghan, could smell a student long before the unfortunate victim entered the portals of McDaid’s pub on Harry Street.

Earnestly, with all of the arrogance of a confirmed, penniless poet, he would collar him — not her — because women rarely entered public houses in those years, and insist that he should earn the privilege of buying that doyen of literature a pint.

Kavanagh knew he was great. It just took the rest of the world a little too long to cop on.

Do you seriously believe that any of them would refuse the offer of a brown envelope, containing cash, to further their greatest need, the necessity to write?

Those who fondly imagine that they are intellectuals, might agree, but that is because they all shared the artistic imperative in common.

They will plead that one cannot compare such worthwhile people to an arrogant, Tammany Hall-type of politician intent on the sordid pursuit of preserving his, or her, power.

Why not? Why ever not?

Those who think that they know all about Tammany Hall politicians, Irish America, or the likes of James Curley of Boston, might very well suppose that they had nothing else in mind but to hold on to their power for power’s sake.

That is now politically correct and ethically sanctified.

But it does not mean that it is right.

There were politicians and there will always be politicians who are little better than two-bit salesmen, evasive and persuasive enough to get themselves elected. They may then discover that they can really do something to change the world.

Almost certainly, they will realize that the bureaucracy-mad officials stand in the way.

They will treat those people in much the same way as Patrick Kavanagh, the eminent poet, treated students in his day — with the utmost contempt.

And they will attempt to circumvent the system because they have come to realize, more than anyone, that the system, no more than the student, just does not work for the betterment of no more than a few.

They know that the stockyards of Chicago were not built on the plaintive notes of a Gene Autry tune. It was built on sweat, tears, and not a little blood.

Like the U.S., it was the result of a totally pragmatic deal. It was something that people just had to go along with because it was really the only game in the West, the only game worth a two-bit curse.

They are the politicians who are prepared to ride high and wide on the borders of fantasy. Like entrepreneurs, of whom there were few in Ireland, they are risk-takers. They are not prepared to let the system get in their way. If it does, they will invent ways to circumvent it or to suspend it. They are interested in achievement at all costs. They have their own goals and they will pursue them, come hell or high water.

It was people like that, people prepared to suspend some of their loftiest political notions that cooperated to form TACA away back in the 1960s. It was a liaison between business-minded politicians and politically minded businessmen.

The title TACA, is based on a Gaelic expression meaning, in broad terms, "self-help," and it was coined by a committee, led by Harry Boland, nephew and namesake of the former IRA leader, assassinated during the Civil War, and co-founder of the accountancy firm Haughey-Boland and Associates.

Inadvertently, they scattered the seeds that flowered into some of the more exotic foliage now being examined by various tribunals in the chambers of Dublin Castle.

The best one can say about it, is that it seemed a good idea at the time.

Journalists must understand the ethos before they can fully appreciate the results. Too few of the modern breed seem to appreciate just how difficult and perilous the Irish economy was in the 1950s and ’60s. The old adage is still true. Eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Both, in truth, and with some charity, I remember it well.

It helps to temper my view of some of the corruption that is so sensationally revealed, day by day. While it does not excuse any of it, it certainly helps to explain a lot.

Could the Celtic Tiger have thrived at all without the shakers and movers of those years?