Promoting foes made them `less of a threat'

Mr Charles Haughey believed that promoting his political enemies to positions of power made them less of a threat to his own position, according to Ms Terry Keane, with whom he had a 27-year relationship.

"Charlie said he had learnt from Jack Lynch's big mistake," Ms Keane writes in her memoirs. "He believed that if you had somebody who was your bitter enemy you put them as close to you as you can, where, went his theory, it's more difficult for them to manoeuvre the knife into your back." She says he therefore made the late George Colley his first Tanaiste and Mr Des O'Malley his minister for industry and commerce when he became Taoiseach in 1979.

Ms Keane recalls that Mr Haughey had been to school with Mr Colley, "and had always regarded him as the dull boy. He remained dull, Charlie felt, but had become dangerous."

In the case of Mr O'Malley, the former Taoiseach used to say that the double tragedy in 1968 was that Donogh O'Malley had died, and his nephew Des was his replacement, she adds. "I liked Dessie a lot and, like my friendship with Lynch, it was to become the source of many rows between myself and Charlie. "Curiously he felt that it was Pat O'Malley, Dessie's wife, who was the problem. Charlie always felt Pat was more aggressive towards him than Dessie was. Although it has to be said Dessie needed little encouragement in that direction."

Ms Keane says Mr Haughey believes that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, a onetime close political associate, has "no guts, no courage" and accuses him of having "hung me out to dry" since the revelations of the payments made to him emerged in 1994. "Even if he couldn't be seen to align himself publicly, Charlie felt he [Ahern] could have privately. Bertie sends half-messages of support to Kinsealy; never openly condemning Haughey, never defending him."

She says of all Mr Haughey's political adversaries in the 1980s, he regarded the then Labour leader, Mr Dick Spring, as the "most treacherous". Mr Haughey would say there was an element of trust among party leaders. "With them, you've got to say this is the picture. But with Spring that couldn't happen. `He reneges on everything,' said Charlie."

Writing yesterday in the Sunday Times, Ms Keane said Mr Haughey liked Ms Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and considered her an ally at the Cabinet table. "He looked after her interests politically and helped her on a personal level. I would say: `You should tell her to get her hair cut; it looks ridiculous.' And he would launch into a great defence of her, even on such a trivial issue. "When she turned on him at the ardfheis in 1991, he was in shock. She spoke about the Haughey era in the past tense. He could not believe it."

Ms Keane says in his early months as Taoiseach, MrHaughey regarded Mr Albert Reynolds as a very good friend, "albeit one with not altogether virtuous intentions".

He simply adored the late Brian Lenihan and considered him a natural for the Department of Foreign Affairs, according to Ms Keane. "Charlie always admired the way Lenihan could turn almost any situation into a positive one."

Mr Haughey regarded, with "certainty", his first minister for agriculture, Mr Ray MacSharry, as his heir apparent, and could not understand why he did not want to become Taoiseach. Mr Michael O'Kennedy was also "a good friend", but he knew that Ms Mary Harney "would be a menace", writes Ms Keane. "I considered her intelligent. The only quality he could discern in her was that she was a good speaker."

Ms Keane says Dr Garret FitzGerald's "flawed pedigree" Dail speech in 1979 was "perhaps the most wounding criticism" Mr Haughey received in public life.

Ms Keane writes that Mr Haughey disliked Mrs Mary Robinson "so intensely that he might have fancied taking her on in an election". He thought she was "an opportunist; a constitutional lawyer who had no effect on the Constitution".