Charles Haughey was born 100 years ago on September 16th, 1925, at a house in Mountain View, Castlebar, reserved for the commandant of the 4th battalion, Western Command, 2nd Brigade – in this case his father, Johnnie.
Johnnie Haughey was in the middle of a poker game with his fellow officers when the midwife was called to his wife Sarah.
The midwife ushered the men out of the house around midnight and Charles, known as Cathal in his early years, was born in the early hours of the morning, the third of seven children.
Haughey spent just three years in Castlebar before moving to a small farm in Co Meath. He had no memory of living there. Nevertheless, the local Fianna Fáil faithful proclaimed him Mayo’s first taoiseach when he assumed the office in December 1979.
Haughey had previously been voted Mayo man of the year in 1978. He arrived in Castlebar in October 1980, three months after being elected taoiseach, to unveil two plaques to himself, in English and Irish, on the handsome two-storey home where he was born.
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There was a flyover, and a pipe band accompanied himself and an estimated crowd of 5,000 people to the home, where the unveiling was done by Msgr James Horan of Knock basilica fame. The pair would combine to bring to fruition, in 1986, the “foggy boggy” airport at Knock, much derided at the time, but much enduring since.
Even Haughey knew his link with Castlebar was more tenuous than many cared to admit at the time, joking with the crowd that he had managed to retain his Mayo accent all his life.
Haughey’s peripatetic early years allowed him to claim ties with many places and was parodied in the hugely popular Scrap Saturday radio sketch series, in which comic Dermot Morgan, much-missed in the years since, would conjure up Haughey relatives and connections from the most obscure places.
Castlebar being a small place, the midwife who delivered Haughey was Bridget Minch who 12 years previously had also delivered Henry Kenny, future Mayo All-Ireland winning footballer, Fine Gael TD and, most importantly, the father of Enda Kenny – Mayo’s actual first taoiseach.
Haughey’s birthplace was down to his father’s status as a Free State officer in the local barracks. His birth came only two years after the end of the Civil War. Both of Haughey’s parents were from Swatragh, Co Derry – his father was active in the War of Independence, his mother in Cumann na mBan.
After Partition, Johnnie Haughey joined the newly formed National Army and was stationed in Castlebar, where many within the civilian population were “almost entirely hostile to the Army”, according to contemporary accounts.
Conditions for officers such as himself were appalling. They were originally billeted in accommodation in Ballina which had no heating, lighting or windows. The commandant was vocal in trying to improve conditions for himself and his men.
He first began to exhibit symptoms of the disease that would eventually kill him, multiple sclerosis, in 1924, the year before Charles was born. He was travelling by train from Castlebar to Athlone when he began to shake. He had to move out of the first-class carriage to the third-class carriage because of fears that he would collapse with nobody around him.
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It is clear from his pension application that he also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his activities in the revolutionary period. He complained of suffering from insomnia and restlessness. In 1926 he was exhibiting signs of “marked moroseness and depression” and his gait was “definitely spastic in character”, a doctor noted.
He quit the Army at the age of 30 and took up farming outside Dunshaughlin in Co Meath in 1928, but the MS began to inhibit his motor movements very quickly and he could not summon up the energy to farm any more.
Shortly after being diagnosed with MS, then known as disseminated sclerosis, he quit farming, and the Haughey family moved to 12 Belton Park Road, Donnycarney, Dublin, where Charles grew up.
Johnnie Haughey began to have trouble walking in 1934. He could only sign his name with an X in 1942, such was the extent of his difficulties. His disability due to the illness was so severe that it was listed as “100 per cent”.
He died in 1947. In his latter years, his wife Sarah carried him up the stairs to bed. She received a pension for her service in Cumann na mBan.
By all accounts, Johnnie Haughey was a supporter of Michael Collins and had a portrait of him in the family home. His son could reasonably have been expected to join Fine Gael rather than Fianna Fáil, given the Civil War divide.
Yet, in the year that his father died, Haughey joined Fianna Fáil. The most compelling reason for this decision was probably his burgeoning romance with Maureen Lemass, the daughter of then tánaiste Seán Lemass, but Haughey may have been attracted to what he saw as Fianna Fáil’s more progressive economic policies compared to the Fine Gael alternatives.
For multiple reasons, the life of Charles Haughey remains one of the most scrutinised in Irish political history. All his biographers have speculated about the impact his impoverished childhood might have had later in his life and his motivations to live a life entirely different from the one he experienced as a child. What is clear is that Haughey himself never spoke of it except in passing, and gave no account of his life for posterity.
