Were I to be born again, dear God, I ask merely one favour: that I get Charles Haughey's luck. To have enemies as ineffectual and inert and accomplices as cowardly and servile as Charlie Haughey's was luck at its most silvered. Though to be sure, it's not just luck; for what was the nature of the society which permitted this bamboozling fraud to get away with what he did, and not for a mere six months or so, but for the best part of 30 years? And who, precisely, are we to condemn any other society in the world when we have not merely tolerated, but allowed by fair and democratic means, a man such as Charlie Haughey to govern us?
Two tribunals
Charlie Haughey, was, as we know, sumptuously, extravagantly, spell-bindingly corrupt: why else two tribunals have been called into existence, not to establish that, but to investigate the depths of depravity to which he had immersed the governance of the country? Yet how is it possible that he could live the life he did for so long without inquiry by the Revenue Commissioners? We can all understand why no civil servant would have dared even open that interesting file marked "Haughey" while its subject was running the country, even though perverse commercial decisions were being daily taken by the Government.
But how is it possible that even under a Fianna Fail administration which loathed him throughout the 1970s, there was no investigation into his extravagant lifestyle? How is it possible that even under a coalition government which detested him for political, tribal and ideological reasons, he was never investigated? Was he not blessed to have such enemies, so pusillanimous and equivocal, even as he surrounded himself with Haugheysomes, smaller versions of himself, and composed of the same vile genes, green and sleazy?
And how he perfected the technique of being free at a bound. He was, as we know, acquitted in the Arms Trial of 30 years ago; yet the support base which he built up over the succeeding years seemed in some unspoken way to be based on some publicly undeclared consensus that as a government minister he had engaged in the importation of guns to arm the IRA.
Fortune has again favoured him. Here is what appeared in the Irish Independent and has been used with such brilliant forensic effect by Haughey's counsel:
"Ironically, it was the Moriarty Tribunal's revelation on Wednesday of Charlie Haughey's £8.5 million spending spree that started to take the heat out of the Sheedy controversy. Mary Harney says that, as bad as this week has been, nothing could be as awful as the intimidation and ruleby-fear of the Haughey years in Fianna Fail. `I hate being defined in terms of Fianna Fail.' Does she think he should go to jail?
No hesitation
" `I do, yes,' she replies without a nano-second's hesitation. `He should be convicted.'
"But what about the argument that a 74-year-old should not be subjected to a prison sentence?
" `That doesn't wash with me, not when people have used public office for their own gain, as he did.' She says she feels vindicated for the stand she took against her former leader.
"Similarly, she believes that the retired Dublin County Manager, George Redmond, should be jailed. `We are often critical when politicians don't follow the planners' advice and here we have a clear case of where the advice was tainted because the person was compromised.'
"Likewise, Frank Dunlop, the former Government press secretary and originally the choice of her mentor Jack Lynch should be prosecuted by the state. . "
Now in none of the foregoing is there any mention of obstructing the McCracken tribunal, the alleged offence for which Mr Haughey has been charged. Quite the reverse; the context of her remarks is quite plain. It is to do with Moriarty and more broadly, with corruption in Irish life, not with the charge of obstructing tribunals. In almost the same breath, she identifies two other men whom we know to be corrupt, and who, she said, should be prosecuted - again, not for misleading tribunals, an offence with which they have certainly not been charged, but for the very corruption that the McCracken, Flood and Moriarty Tribunals have confirmed existed.
Even the adverbs which the journalist Justine McCarthy uses to link the three names - "similarly", "likewise"- confirm the category of the offence to which Mary Harney is referring: corruption. Yet Judge Kevin Haugh, whose earlier decision to send out questionnaires to jurors in the Haughey case was unanimously overruled by the High Court, was able to come to the conclusion that a jury member in a trial of Charles Haughey could be influenced by the Harney remark.
Solid grounds
I know Kevin Haugh. He is an honest man, and I do not doubt his judgment was based on solid legal grounds; I merely do not understand those grounds, that's all. But then there is so much I don't understand. I don't understand how another honest man such as Mark Kavanagh could this week testify (in only the latest of many comparable allegations before the Moriarty Tribunal) that in 1989 he gave Charles Haughey £100,000, of which £75,000 promptly vanished without trace, without this allegation doing far worse damage to Haughey's reputation than anything Mary Harney said.
I'm thick. I know it. I just wish I had Charles Haughey's luck, that's all.