A young Turk full of overweening ambition

The Early Years: A new era was dawning, and Charles Haughey had ambition, charisma and ability. Dick Walsh traced his early career.

It was the worst of times for the country, the best of times for young men with ambition and political clout, when Charles Haughey was elected to the Dáil, at the fourth attempt, in 1957. He was 32.

Many had reached the despairing conclusion that the lately declared Republic was dying on its feet. Emigration emptied the countryside at an alarming rate, estimated by some at 80,000 a year.

A succession of governments - multi-party, single-party and coalition - had tried, and failed, to secure a share in the post-war European boom. They were defeated by the smothering influence of the Catholic Church, the distraction of an IRA campaign on the Border and a stagnant economy.

But the truth was beginning to dawn on the revolutionary generation which had dominated politics for almost 40 years. Revolutionaries had established the State; it would take a younger generation and a different vision to fashion its future in post-war Europe.

By the end of 1959, Eamon de Valera had become President and Sean Lemass was Taoiseach. T.K. Whitaker had written the first Programme for Economic Expansion. Whitaker's programme, Lemass's energy, and generational change combined to produce a new force in politics.

Protection would soon be a thing of the past. Foreign investment was essential, not only to provide jobs but to develop a new managerial class. From now on, the patriots would be pragmatists. When, after two seminal terms in office, Lemass decided to quit, those of the Old Guard who were still in service found themselves surrounded by men who hadn't been born at the foundation of the State but who were now sure they knew how it should be run.

Commentators wrote of a new breed: Donogh O'Malley, Paddy Hillery, George Colley, Sean Flanagan and Brian Lenihan. But among these ministers of the 1960s, the most openly ambitious and, even then, most ostentatiously successful, was Charles Haughey.

Others, like Colley and Neil Blaney, believed they'd inherited the qualities of their fathers who were among the founders of Fianna Fáil; Haughey, whose parents were republicans from Swatragh but whose father joined the Army when the Treaty was signed, was convinced that he had been born to lead the party.

His other careers marched in step with his political ambition. At 26, lately married to Maureen Lemass, he was a partner in the accountancy firm, Haughey and Boland. It was a base on which he would build a valuable network of professional and business contacts.

One of his articled clerks was Des Traynor - "my trusted friend and financial adviser" - whose handling of his affairs would be used, again and again, to explain Haughey's own inability to account for his personal finances at the McCracken and Moriarty Tribunals.

From the beginning, Haughey was determined to impress the Dáil and its observers. Even before he succeeded Oscar Traynor at the Department of Justice in 1961, he'd contributed confidently to debates on the economy, often in the gruff tones and direct style for which Lemass was famous.

By day he impressed the Dáil. By night he basked in the admiration of a fashionable audience in the Russell Hotel. There, or in Dublin's more expensive restaurants, the company included artists, musicians and entertainers; more often, architects, builders and speculators.

His companions, Lenihan and O'Malley, took mischievous delight in entertaining the Russell with tales of the Old Guard. O'Malley in turn entertained the company in Limerick's Brazen Head or Cruise's Hotel with accounts of the crowd in the Russell. On the wings of such tales Haughey's reputation spread.

In Justice, he managed to meet the fastidious standards set by the secretary of his Department. Peter Berry was to report: "He was a joy to work with, and the longer he stayed the better he got." The change which most pleased Berry was a long overdue increase in funds.

He took on causes that were both popular and worthy. The inheritance rights of wives were protected in the Succession Act, the rights of suspects sought in other jurisdictions in the Extradition Act. He promoted the abolition of capital punishment in most cases.

And, in spite of republican Swatragh and his own gleefully recalled record - he burned a Union flag outside Trinity College on Victory in Europe (VE) Day, 1945 - he introduced Special Military Courts to put an end to the IRA campaign.

He revelled in the excitement of prosperity and change. But, for all Haughey's promises, rising tides never lift all boats. And, as Haughey was to discover when he was transferred to Agriculture in 1964, the countryside still suffered from the desolation of the 1950s. His predecessor, Paddy Smith, had resigned in pique because Lemass paid too little attention to farmers' needs, too much to the unions. Inside a year, farmers laid siege to Haughey's office. He refused to meet them. They accused him of arrogance; he followed Lemass's line that they were Fine Gaelers bent on subversion. They pointed to the money spent on industry and administration. So did he.

Georgian Dublin was sacrificed to ugly office blocks, raised by Haughey's friends and clients and rented by the State. Boland shouted down protesters, calling them the "belted earls". Campaigners for better housing, republicans and socialists, were watched by the Special Branch. Nobody shouted stop. For Haughey, there were glittering prizes. The family moved from modest Donnycarney to Grangemore, a handsome estate in Raheny, and from there to Abbeville with its Gandon mansion, 220 acres and a stand of oak. His admirers were impressed.

One prize eluded him. When Lemass retired the path to leadership seemed open. He believed he had the measure of his old rival Colley and the ultra-nationalist Blaney. But the Old Guard suspected his wealth, style and connections.

Lemass and the party chose Jack Lynch, who lacked Haughey's overweening ambition and daemonic character. Although Haughey had made such memorable gestures as free travel for the old and tax concessions for the arts, Lynch had won public confidence of a kind that Haughey never attained.

In Finance, Haughey maintained the following among businessmen he had always enjoyed. Now, in addition to the circle in the Russell Hotel there were other builders and speculators who gathered in the Gresham on Saturday nights for £100-a-plate dinners under the fund-raising auspices of Taca.

The Old Guard continued to have their doubts. The press had none. When Haughey's wealth became an issue in the 1969 general election, he shrugged it off as of no public interest.