Latter day high king developed opulent lifestyle

"THINK BIG" read the motto on a framed plaque in Abbeville, spotted by a journalist on a visit there 20 years ago. No one was surprised.

Charles Haughey might have had a famous eye for the smallest detail, but when it came to a lust for life and its finer manifestations, no one thought bigger.

Think house? Think majestic Abbeville. Holiday home? Think entire island. Boat? Think oceangoing yacht. Horse? Think entire stud farm. Ancestry? Think the High Kings of Ireland.

Call it irony or a twist of fate but the man once dubbed King of Ireland by supporters even had an Abbeville predecessor - the first owner, in fact - who also rejoiced in the nickname, King of Ireland. History, however, has not been kind to the Right Honourable John Beresford, Commissioner of the Revenue.

On the surface, "life seems to have been a masterpiece" for the tax chief, writes Mary Rose Doorly in her book Abbeville~~. Underneath the aesthetic triumph, however, his real life's work was to set up a vast empire for himself and his ubiquitous relatives, a plan carried out "in an atmosphere of corruption, secret land deals, bullying and a general arrogance to ensure he got what he wanted".

Perhaps he was a victim of the same media conspiracy as Charles Haughey always believed himself to be. Both earned a living in the public service, both had exquisite taste, both lived like kings and both, clearly, were subject to the slings and arrows of a carping peasantry.

In Haughey's case, the carping was manifest in such oblique terms as "unexplained wealth". Or to be blunt, how could he afford a king's trappings on a public servant's salary? His answer at a 1979 press conference derided the questioners and the question. "Ask my bank manager," he said.

In the absence of an obliging bank manager, interrogators were left floundering as this latterday Ozymandias built himself a life style around which a legend was born. "The acceptable face of fantasy" was how journalist Anne Harris described him for T. Ryle Dwyer's book, Charlie. Huh?

Lest the message was unclear, the biographer elaborated: "Over the years, he has provided inspiration for Irish people wishing to fantasise about money, power and the good life. As such he fulfils much the same role as the royal family in Britain ...

IRISH people, generally, might be surprised to hear them selves characterised in such a fashion, but there may be the germ of an insight there. How else to explain the little stab of regret felt even by some of Haughey's fiercest antagonists this week? Can the legend of the all knowing one with the basilisk gaze and champagne tastes be so easily crushed?

Reporters anxious to ask the man himself turned up at a charity function in the Mansion House on Thursday at which he was scheduled to appear, only to be told he was on his island. Where else would he be? For a man seeking to commune with seabirds and red deer rather than the ravening humans swarming around Dublin Castle, Inishvickillane is an earthly paradise.

The ultimate offshore island, accessible only by helicopter except in the calmest of weather, was, bought by Haughey in 1974, reportedly for around £25,000.

The squat, singlestorey holiday home built afterwards is reckoned by property experts to have cost around £250,000 in today's terms, as most of the building materials had to be hoisted across the nine mile Atlantic swell by leased helicopters. It was bought at a time when a TD's salary was around £5,000 a year.

Haughey is said to be very proud of the nineinch pine planking and ceilings in the main room. The roof beams are beech from Kinsealy trees felled by gales. Chairs are draped in heavy sheepskin and at the dining table - which seats a good dozen - stands a chieftain's chair made for Micheal MacLiammoir for a Gate theatre production.

Guests eat by candlelight (only the kitchen and bathroom use generator power) to the accompaniment of a radio crackling to the conversations of shipping out in the Atlantic. Cases of choice claret are stacked up in the host's bedroom; impertinent guests who request Chateau Lynch get it without a whimper.

Afterwards, conversation is around the fire where there is a choice of draught Guinness or Smithwicks or spirits and the host sips brandy and soda. It is by all accounts a good party house. A Portakabin used in the early days for accommodation was later reduced to its base and used as a dance floor. A mound of rocks in the centre of the island around an ancient oratory has been christened Hangover Hill by the Haughey offspring.

THE Haughey offspring are accustomed to good party houses. Back home in Kinsealy (perhaps after sailing back in the £200,000 50 foot ketch, Celtic Mist) its famously hospitable host might greet them in his own Irish pub, designed by Sam Stephenson.

Lest the party sag for lack of a good vintage, the red brick wine cellar boasts some of the wine world's most prestigious labels: a Chateau Margaux 1957, a Mouton Rothschild 67, a Chateau Laffite 1920.

Nonetheless, of all the wonderful rooms in the 200 year old listed mansion, the 16 foot high ballroom is his favourite, the place where he feels at his best. Here much of the generous entertaining has taken place, ranging from wedding receptions to visiting foreign dignitaries to participants in the hunter trials held on the estate.

From its bow windows, the Abbeville lake with its lone swan glimmers among ancient woods of walnut, cedar, beech, oak and 300 year old yew trees. Anyone tempted to stroll beyond the front door will encounter the three tiered, white marble, Victorian fountain, and note the Haughey coat of arms at the base, depicting a lion and stag respecting each other and bearing the Latin words Marte Nostro (By Our Own Efforts).

Pavarotti was around to buy a horse from the stud farm, though Eimear brought the Abbeville name with her when she married the racehorse trainer, John Mulhern, and moved to Kildare. Horses, however, have remained a vital part of Haughey playtime since the early 1960s, racehorses and hunters.

How he bought this magnificent edifice in the first place would appear to be a dazzling example of Haughey shrewdness. According to Doorly, he paid £120,000 for it in 1969 and a few years later sold off a field for more than the original price of the entire estate, "effectively acquiring Abbeville for nothing". Before that, the Haugheys had lived in Grangemore, a Victorian mansion on 45 acres near Raheny.

This he sold to the Gallagher Group for £204,000 after the land had been rezoned, a rezoning that was inevitable. However, the deal remains controversial to this day as a result of the late Gerry Sweetman's claim that Haughey had managed to avoid the payment of income tax and surtax on the sale as a result of provisions Haughey himself had introduced a year before under the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 1968.

It was just another thorn in his side. He trenchantly denied the allegations, just as he had always denied any suggestion of impropriety in the cosy relationship that existed between property developers and members of various Fianna Fail governments in the Taca days - in particular questions about the selection of property being rented by government departments and agencies as their space demands exploded in the unprecedented economic boom.

He has described Taca as a "fairly innocent concept... Insofar as it had any particular motivation, it was to make the party independent of big business"; words that seem fairly ironic this week in the light of allegations emanating from one big businessman in Dublin Castle.

Dozens of rumours have surfaced over the years about Charles Haughey and the source of his apparent wealth, intermingled with counter rumours about the extent of his penury. Well wishers insist that he made his fortune in the new accountancy practice he founded with Harry Boland in 1951.

That was a fairly short lived venture, however, because in 1961 he gave up the practice and any business interests he held on his appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice, according to a later interview he gave to The Irish Times.

Because of his persistent refusal to even hint at the source of his apparent wealth - it was forbidden territory in interviews, along with the Arms Trial - speculation never died. The reason is obvious. Estimates of how much it costs to maintain a Haughey lifestyle vary from £250,000 a year to as much as £500,000.

Yet he was a public representative for 35 years and a holder of office for 20 of those, for the most part on relatively modest salaries. The questions remain.