A very public affair

The Other Woman: Charles Haughey's private life was also a matter of speculation until Terry Keane revealed all, writes Renagh Holohan.

Mr Haughey with Ms Terry Keane at an art gallery opening in Dublin in November, 1998.

It was in spring, 1999, that a stunned nation became aware of Charlie Haughey's long affair with fashion writer and gossip columnist Terry Keane. And it was Mrs Keane herself who was the informant. While political and journalistic circles in Dublin knew about the 27-year romance, at least 90 per cent of the population knew nothing.

Mrs Keane had never been reticient about the relationship; indeed she spoke about it frequently to friends and journalist colleagues and frequently referred to it, obliquely, in her gossip columns. But her revelation on one of Gay Byrne's last Late Late Shows was a scoop that astounded the country.

Terry Keane was born Ann Teresa O'Donnell of Irish parents, a doctor and a bank official, in Guildford, Surrey, in 1939. She spent time in Ireland as a child during the war and returned to study medicine in Trinity College, Dublin, in her late teens. She dropped out without taking a degree and, after a series of adventures, including an out-of-wedlock child that she revealed in later years and was subsequently reunited with, she married a young barrister, Ronan Keane. The couple had three children before separating some years ago. Ronan Keane went on to become Chief Justice.

In an hour-long RTÉ television profile in April, 2000, Terry Keane spoke frankly and at length about her life. Throughout their affair, which started in 1972, Charlie Haughey and Terry Keane were and remained married. Mrs Keane did not dodge the issue. She said in 2000 "if Maureen Haughey was hurt (by the revelations a year previously) I'm sorry about that, but I'm sure she was hurt a long time ago. I'm sure it didn't come as a surprise."

Mrs Keane said she went public on the affair in May 1999, because Mr Haughey had told her over lunch that he wished to return photographs and mementoes of their time together because he was "trying to get his life in order".

"I was very taken aback, staggered by this and profoundly upset," she said. So upset, it appears, that when faced with the imminent publication of a book - Sweetie - threatening to give details of the affair she decided to tell Gay Byrne and the nation her side of the story.

Both the 1999 Late Late Show interview and the profile in 2000 were riveting television. But Terry Keane was no stranger to the limelight. Early in her marriage to Ronan Keane she took up journalism, writing women's articles and fashion for The Irish Times and the Sunday Press. At one stage she was probably the foremost fashion journalist in the country and her own personal style added weight to her writings.

She hung out during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, with a feisty bunch of female journalists and was a dramatic and entertaining, if unpredictable, presence on the Dublin fashion scene. It was on these occasions she often spoke of her lover. Once, attending a fashion show, glass of champagne in hand, she was heard to remark loudly: "I'm the most powerful woman in Ireland - my husband is a High Court judge and I'm the mistress of the Taoiseach." A fellow journalist remembers her "holding one leg high in the air and saying how much Charlie loved her legs". She frequently referred to her trips abroad with Mr Haughey.

When she joined the Sunday Independent in 1989 her gossip column, "The Keane Edge", became known for its bitchiness, double entendre, innuendo and occasion snippets of real social news. She referred frequently to "Sweetie" and "Charlie, my petit matelot" as well as trysts in the mists of Inishvickillane. Those not in the know, ie most of the country, were mystified.

But The Keane Edge was not the only place where the lovers featured, however obliquely. The Boss by Peter Murtagh and Joe Joyce, published in 1983, stated: "In political circles and at some levels of Dublin society, his lengthy liaison with a married woman was widely discussed." There were also mentions in Private Eye, which carried one hilarious story about the pair, in Phoenix and on Scrap Saturday where Charlie and Teasie was a regular sketch. The greatest revelations of all, however, were Mrs Keane's May, 1999, three-part memoir for the Sunday Times, accompanied by personal photographs, including one of Mr Haughey on one knee before her. The detail caused a sensation and, it is said in circles close to the former Taoiseach, ended any friendship that remained after the breakup of the relationship.

In these memoirs, for which it is said she was paid a paltry £65,000 plus £100,000 for a two- year contract to write a column, Mrs Keane boasted of the political influence she had exercised over the then Taoiseach. She claimed she persuaded Mr Haughey to change his mind about resigning when Des O'Malley led a Fianna Fáil heave in 1982; that she was used as conduit between the H-Block hunger-strikers and Mr Haughey; that he was bitter to be made scapegoat in the Arms Crisis when other ministers were aware of the plan and agreed it was right. The "kiss-and-tell" memoirs turned many in her circle against Mrs Keane. They saw them as revenge for being dumped, as a way of making money to replace the lavish lifestyle which had come courtesy of Haughey before his fall, and as cruel to the Haughey family. Mr Haughey always refused to comment on the matter.

In a recent interview on the Late Late Show she said she regretted having revealed the affair. She said she had just been diagnosed with heart disease when she appeared on the show in 1999 and had been "under pressure", "misguided" and "misled" at the time.

"I acknowledge what I did was wrong," she said, adding that she regretted hurting so many people and "bitterly" regretted not thinking out her planned appearance with Gay Byrne. "I deeply regret all the pain I caused to so many people . . . innocent people got hurt," she said.