February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The first Haughey documentary embarked on a lengthy examination of the political legacy bequeathed by the enigmatic figure. Starting with the arms trial of 1970, the program makers have stirred up old animosities with its portrayal of the controversial leader.
The series has coincided not only with the death of Doherty, but with the ratcheting up of the Moriarty tribunal into alleged corrupt payments to senior politicians at which Haughey finds himself again front and center.
Doherty, the record shows, precipitated Haughey’s resignation from office in 1992 after alleging that the taoiseach had been aware of his (Doherty’s) decision to bug the phones of several senior Irish journalists — including current Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy, Bruce Arnold and Vincent Browne — in the early 1980s.
The main protagonists in that saga have all been busy in recent days offering their contradictory takes on Haughey’s alleged role in the controversy.
Questions have been raised as to why Doherty chose to keep his peace about Haughey’s role for ten years, with some suggesting that he wanted to end Haughey’s reign so that he would make way for Albert Reynolds.
Reynolds has said that, after learning of Doherty’s plans to spill the beans, he attempted to stop him, but to no avail.
Kennedy wrote a piece for her own newspaper chronicling her side of the story while Terry Prone, a PR specialist, detailed the circumstances surrounding Doherty’s decision to bring down Haughey, who has been suffering from prostate cancer in recent years and who has been more than once described as being terminally ill.
Meanwhile, the Moriarty Tribunal this week looks at the recently discovered meeting, arranged by Haughey, between former supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne and the former Revenue Commissioners chairman Seamus Pairceir, in May 1987.
Pairceir is said to have personally supervised a tax assessment on Dunne’s family business, Dunnes Stores. Dunne is scheduled to begin his evidence today.
The tribunal is seeking to establish whether the firm received any favors after it paid around IR