A life of betrayal and forgiveness
Married to a man who thrived on glitz and excess, she always stood by him. But Maureen Haughey was no cuckolded housewife — just a woman who was loyal to her family
IRELAND has had a long and weighty tradition of political families — and some dynasties are more notorious and compelling than others. With Taoiseach Charlie as its lynchpin, and playing against the backdrop of recession-addled 1980s Ireland, the Haughey family’s episode in power was a heady brew of betrayal, corruption, power and unabashed glamour.
Maureen Haughey peacefully died this week in the Mater Private hospital after a short illness at 91. It is somewhat poignant that the steely matriarch died on St Patrick’s Day. After all, her life as the wife of one taoiseach and the daughter of another — 1916 Rising hero Seán Lemass — meant that she was, for better or worse, tied inextricably to the Irish state.
This week, many remembered her as a remarkable figurehead.
‘Maureen was a wonderfully warm, dignified and intelligent woman,’ Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said in a statement. ‘She was a tower of strength to her late husband and loving daughter of former taoiseach Seán Lemass.
‘Throughout her distinguished life, she witnessed some of the major turning points in Irish history. Maureen was a very active woman and kept a keen interest in the evolution of Irish society. She was a patriot who loved her country and retained a key interest in the development of Irish society.’
Des Peelo, financial adviser to Charlie Haughey and a friend of the family, echoed this sentiment on RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke show yesterday. ‘She always had a lovely presence, and there were no airs and graces about her,’ he said.
‘She may not have pursued [her own] career, but I had an underlying feeling that she really was Charlie’s closest adviser. She wouldn’t have said it in your presence or anyone else’s, but if she felt he was being an eejit, she would have told him.’
It’s safe to assume that Maureen — who met her husband when they were both studying commerce in UCD — had her husband’s ear. Yet to many, she will be best remembered as a paragon of stoicism and dignity in the face of much ignominy.
To some, Maureen Haughey has been one of the country’s most publicly betrayed wives ever. And in the face of humiliation, she showed true grace under pressure, standing by her man with unwavering support.
Keeping a low profile and assuming a mainly background role during Champagne Charlie’s political career, Maureen was thrust into public view in 1999. That was the year that columnist Terry Keane, wife of former chief justice Ronan Keane, revealed on the Late Late Show that she and Haughey had conducted a 27-year extramarital affair.
In a move that she subsequently admitted that she regretted, Keane confirmed that the man she had been referring to for years in her newspaper column as ‘Sweetie’ was indeed Haughey. Keane had intimated at the time that both Maureen and her own husband had known of the
‘If she felt he was being an eejit, she would tell him’ ‘What was difficult for her was the tribunals’
relationship, although others closer to Maureen hinted that, in the direct aftermath of that fateful Late Late Show appearance, she was said to be deeply hurt by the revelation.
It wasn’t the only way in which Charlie’s retirement from public office was mired in controversy: the Moriarty Tribunal, investigating a series of payments that the Taoiseach and Michael Lowry received from senior businessmen over an 18year period, was established in 1997.
The highly damning report was published eventually in 2011, five years after Haughey’s death from prostate cancer, and laid bare the full extent of Haughey’s flagrant spending and love of extravagance. Furthermore, it transpired that Haughey faced criminal charges for obstructing the work of the tribunal.
‘What was difficult for [Maureen] was the tribunals,’ affirmed Peelo. ‘They went on for a very long time. She could handle the rough and tumble of politics, because you took that for granted and that was the business you were in. But the tribunals were dragging on and on and [she could see] the effect on Charlie. He was quite debilitated, and she looked after him extremely well.
‘In the Tribunal days, Haughey got very bewildered and didn’t fully understand what was going on. She was a tremendous support to him on those days.
‘She had a great sense of humour,’ he went on to add. ‘One day, Charlie came out with a remark that she had never lost a night’s sleep in his life. Maureen interrupted and said, “Des, I’m lying beside him rigid with fright and he’s the one beside me, snoring”.’
Yet only a fool would deem Maureen a walkover, a meekly devoted wife and mother keeping a stoic face while her bowsie husband enjoyed a shamelessly extravagant lifestyle. Her own family’s credentials had her earmarked for greatness long before she encountered Haughey on Belfield’s campus.
Even the romance and subsequent marriage of her parents — Sean Lemass and his childhood sweetheart Kathleen Hughes — is one packed with intrigue.
Hughes’s father opposed her marriage to Lemass, as he was spending so much time in prison following the 1916 Rising. In spite of this, the pair went on to marry in Ranelagh, Dublin. Theirs became a political family of no small repute: Maureen’s brother Noel Lemass and his wife Eileen also went on to become members of Dáil Eireann.
The eldest of Lemass’s four children, Maureen contracted TB as a teenager, and spent a year recovering in hospital before applying to UCD, where she first encountered her future husband.
Some commentators note that Haughey, aware of her illustrious family history, ‘threw an eye’ to the ambitious young woman.
Maureen received her commerce
degree — a rare feat for many women in 1940s’ Ireland — and at the age of 26 married Haughey in September 1951. They had four children: Eimear, Conor, Ciarán and Seán. The latter, too, would go on to become a Fianna Fáil TD.
Maureen was known as a devoted homemaker, but had her own interests too. A keen horse lover and occasional fan of hunting, she was heavily involved in the Riding For The Disabled Association.
In fact, in lieu of funeral flowers, mourners have been asked to make a donation to the charity.
In later life, Maureen remained active, even after leaving Abbeville, her home of 39 years.
In 2008, she finally moved out of the 25-acre estate that had been the family home, and the HQ for Champagne Charlie’s excessive lifestyle. The 14,600sq ft house, which dates from the 1770s, was bought by Haughey when he was minister for finance in 1969. After its sale in 2004, the terms of the deal with developers Manor Homes allowed Haughey and Maureen to continue living there. It was then sold in 2013 to a Japanese businessman for a figure believed to be about €5.2 million.
‘They had a very good relationship,’ surmised Peelo of Haughey and Maureen. ‘They made their own peace. In the latter years, he was not quite under her feet but something close to that. Certainly, they were very close indeed.’
The year 2015, when Maureen turned 90, proved to be an eventful one. In January, RTÉ ran its biopic about Haughey, with Aiden Gillen playing the role of the former taoiseach. Speaking on Joe Duffy’s Liveline show, Maureen’s son Seán confirmed what many suspected — that the family were, initially, ‘horrified by the drama’, and that she ‘wasn’t ecstatic’ about how her late husband was depicted.
Asked whether Maureen had watched it, Sean told Duffy: ‘She did. She’s a divil for punishment. She always reads everything that’s ever written about him, so she watched the three episodes alright with my sister Eimear.’
And while the character of Maureen Haughey remained at large in the three-part series, Keane — played by Lucy Cohu — featured rather more prominently.
‘The main shock was the prominence given to Terry Keane, the pillow talk scenes and so forth,’ added Sean. ‘I think that was quite explicit so I think that was quite a shock alright.’
Later on that year, and having brushed off the ‘shock’ of watching the series, Maureen appeared at a service to honour her father at Deansgrange Cemetery.
She celebrated her 90th with a special lunch for family and friends at home in Kinsealy.
‘She’s in great form and good health. She’s a great age and she’s sharper than ever,’ her son Sean enthused at the time.
That same year, she gave a rare interview at the launch of Fianna Fáil’s commemoration plans for the centenary of the 1916 Rising. She said her father was just 17 years old when the Rising took place and her uncle Noel was 18.
‘His brother was killed just as the Civil War was supposed to be ended, and his body was cut up and everything, but he never spoke about it,’ Maureen recalled. ‘Only maybe some of his old comrades would come in and we’d listen in, and he never talked about the Civil War or anything like that. He just got on with the job and didn’t hold any grudges against anybody.’
Early next week, Maureen will be buried alongside her late husband at St Fintan’s Cemetery in Sutton. It is thought that her son Seán has helped Maureen record her memoirs, although these are said to focus less on the political, public side of her remarkable life, and more to do with the one thing she held dearest to her: her family.
Suffice to say that if they ever see the light of day, the resulting book will be nothing less than a genuine page-turner.
The family were ‘horrified by the RTÉ drama’