That was then...

THE fluent Irish dazzles as Dermot Gilleece, golf correspondent of The Irish Times, recites Archimedes' Principle as Gaeilge. From there, it's a short step to bluth searbh ruibheach (concentrated sulphuric acid for those of you without the blas).

Going to school in Joey's in the Fifties meant taking all subjects, other than English, through Irish. "It's amazing. I learnt things off by heart then and they stuck. But, they didn't really make much sense. The Irish translation was rather cumbersome and didn't relate well to the English names. I suppose there were very few Irish scholars wellversed in the sciences," he muses.

He says he walked through Irish exams and got 10 per cent bonus in his other subjects. Even though his parents didn't speak Irish at home, total immersion at school did not alienate him.

But, "the GAA thing was appalling", he says. The Christian Brothers were extremely sound disciples of the GAA - the foreign games ban was very much enforced. Gilleece remembers a boy in the class below him being expelled for a month because he played soccer with Home Farm.

As to Christian Brother discipline, Gilleece says it was "vicious, really". It was not unusual for the leather to be used until you cried. "Did it do me any harm? I don't know what I'd be like without it. It was a part of school life. You didn't go in fearful for your life, you accepted punishment as part and parcel of school life."

The culture of vicious punishment extended to lay teachers, he adds. "I can imagine how a very shy, withdrawn fragile boy might have been damaged. I was one of the lads - not a hard man - and accepted this as part of school life.

"I'd submit that Joey's was one of the most important schools in Dublin, when you consider that it produced three Government Ministers. It would have had a huge influence on the life of northeast Dublin - the GAA and the golf. The backbone of Haughey's constituency was Joey's. He'd never miss a past pupils' dinner." The hardcore Fenian and GAA types were from Joey's.

"I remember a teacher of English and history. Mulcahy was his name. He talked about Haughey as a brilliant student but not a very likeable young man."

As to why Joey's spawned such a crop of politicians, Gilleece says it may have been something to do with the location of the school, in the middle of working class to lower middle-class area. Almost everyone walked to school, and knew where their fellow students lived - "they'd have been aware of the problems in the area and may have been motivated to do something about it".

Gilleece got a Corporation scholarship - £30 for the first three years and £40 for the last two - and paid £7 a year to go to Joey's. The combination of low fees and scholarship allowed him to attend second-level education, he says.

"I have no doubt but that I'd never have had a secondary education but for it . . . as to the Christian Brothers, clearly the methods were questionable but I think they did a tremendous service."

By the Seventies, Joey's was having mixed success, reports another past pupil. There were five brothers on the teaching staff. "It was a tough school. There was a lot of corporal punishment and it was rough enough in the school yard.

"At that stage, Joey's was a very straightforward school. There were no plays, no drama societies and you played GAA or it was rumoured that you were a homosexual." Of his class, he says three went to college and two to jail.

He remembers being dragged out to look at the pictures of past pupils on the walls . . . the 1942 Dublin hurling champions with Haughey in the front row . . . "it's extraordinary to see the names coming up at the tribunal now. They were what we were meant to aspire to."

Games master Brendan Leahy, who has been with the school since the early Seventies, says Charlie Haughey and his three brothers were loyal to the school - attending past pupils' dinners and prizegivings. As to Haughey's present difficulties, he says his loyalty and positive contribution is far more important. "They're loyal to us and we're loyal to them."