Careers, controversies, cosy cartels

This is a book by one of the outstanding reporters of his generation. Sam Smyth has a well-established record of coming up with nuggets of information that make for terrific stories in the main outlet for his work, the Irish Independent.

It was Smyth who got the story that unearthed the Greencore saga and it was he who first told us that Ben Dunne had bankrolled Michael Lowry's house extension - a dirty little tale of questionable business dealings that led to the McCracken Tribunal. And he has been justly recognised for his work - Sam is festooned with awards.

The subject matter of this slim volume is not one, but several rich veins into which any journalist would burrow with enthusiasm.

Just think. Here is the story of the Dunne family: the single-minded and very religious father, Old Ben, who starts his drapery career at Anderson's of West Street in Drogheda and, by introducing the supermarket concept into Ireland, effects a social revolution, ending his life as the patriarch of a multi-million pound retail chain - the richest family in the land.

I'm old enough to remember it. My Mum used to do her weekly shopping at the Shopping Basket on the Dodder Park Road in Rathfarnham, Co Dublin - a shop with about as much retail floor space as today's average suburban house. That was before Ben opened Cornelscourt: after that, tens of thousands of housewives drove to Cabinteely and very soon all the little shops adapted or died. (The Shopping Basket is now a solicitor's office.)

Ben was rightly amazed at his achievement: every now and then, as Smyth tells us, he and his wife would drive to Cornelscourt and sit in his car just watching the shoppers come and go. In any social history of Ireland in the twentieth century, Ben Dunne ought to loom large.

Then there's Michael Lowry - Fine Gael's answer to Sean Doherty. The hubris of politicians never ceases to amaze: the man who built a ministerial career pointing his finger at cosy cartels in the public sector - of all the people to be caught cheating the taxman! Hee-hee.

Then there's Charlie Haughey - the cloven-hoofed one, the cancer at the centre of Irish politics, as Dick Spring correctly put it, for some 40 years. And here's the central problem with Thanks a mil- lion Big Fella. The book doesn't quite know what it is doing. Is it about Ben (Snr and Jnr), about Lowry or about Haughey? The answer is all three . . . and none.

There is a substantial link between Ben Dunne and Lowry, true. But Haughey comes into the frame only because he's under financial compliment (to the tune of £1.3 million) to one of the richest men in Ireland and got exposed because of a family feud. Try as Smyth does in early chapters, there is nothing to sustain this slightly jerky narrative that binds all three together in a cohesive and coherent whole. One has the feeling that the Haughey element of the story (generously acknowledged as unearthed by a rival, Cliff Taylor of this newspaper) gets in the way of what at times reads like a personal crusade: Sam was out to get Lowry, no doubt about it.

Having started the hare running with an excellent tale about him, a new quarry emerged - Haughey - that put Lowry in the ha'penny place: compared to the corruption of Haughey, Lowry is just a twobit tax cheat. And it is Haughey who still exerts a magnetic attraction: the venal old crook fascinates like no other.

However, there is little new here for aficionados. The Haughey career, the controversies and the style that dominated from the mid-1960s until a few years ago are well-known. One curious nugget however. Page nine tells us that while in the FCA, Private Haughey and 30 others, all armed with Lee Enfields, were drilled by a corporal.

"The following Sunday the corporal was missing and Haughey had been mysteriously promoted. The rest of the squad resigned in protest. `This may have been Charlie's first stroke in official Ireland,' said his colleague."

Is this a suggestion that Haughey had his corporal done away with? I think we should be told.

After 178 pages (and £10 is a bit steep), there isn't a whole lot here we don't already know. Certainly not about Haughey and Lowry (roll on Moriarty!) - McCracken's report (cheaper at £7 and tightly written) is itself a terrific read. Less familiar is the material about the Dunne family, and Chapter nine (all about Ben Jnr in Florida) is a hoot.

This will fill a few stockings on the 25th but I want to read a book about the Big Fella's Da.

Peter Murtagh is a deputy news editor at The Irish Times