Des Hanafin
The Fianna Fail senator and fundraiser was also a leading campaigner against divorce and abortion, says Liam Collins
DES Hanafin, who died last Thursday aged 86, was a Fianna Fail senator and fundraiser, businessman, campaigner against divorce and abortion and a heroic drinker before giving up alcohol altogether.
“I have a flair for making money, but I have no control over money,” he once said, reflecting on the fact that he had made a number of fortunes but had also been in such dire financial straits that on at least one occasion, the sheriff had taken everything he owned to pay debts.
He and his wife Mona used to recall how they attended the wedding of The Dubliners singer Luke Kelly to Deirdre O’Connell in Dublin in 1965 and returned to the Anner Hotel, in Thurles, which the Hanafins then owned, with the bride and groom in tow, as well as a busker they picked up on O’Connell Bridge.
Kelly and his new wife stayed with the Hanafins for much of their honeymoon. But there was the pressing matter of recording The Travelling People, which the songwriter Ewan MacColl had given to Kelly to record, as Kelly’s voice was perfect for the song.
“We set out for Dublin every day (to cut the record) but we never got past Bannon’s pub in Two Mile Borris,” Hanafin recalled, “By the time we eventually made it to Dublin, The Johnstons (another folk group) had made the record.”
During one of his flush periods, Hanafin bought the Anner Hotel as a house but, in need of cash, later turned it into a hotel before losing it in 1968 because of his drinking.
“He had it drunk out by the time I was 10,” his daughter Mary recalled. “If you’re an alcoholic, then a hotel is obviously the wrong place to be. My mother, Mona, went to work in the tourist office. The Hanafins would be well got in Thurles, but the town was very good to us too.
“When my father was drinking, they helped him drink, but when he got off it, they helped him stay off.”
Born on September 9, 1930, in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Des came from a staunchly Fianna Fail/republican background. His father John ‘Johnny’ Hanafin came to Clonmel from Longford, to run a sad- dler shop and become a Fianna Fail councillor.
Des was educated at Blackrock College, Co Dublin. After school, he went to London where he drove a milk float, worked in a bar and knocked around with a racy crowd.
He came back to Thurles in the 1950s and began dealing in heavy machinery and buying and selling oil, making several fortunes.
He was first elected to North Tipperary County Council in 1955, going on to become a Senator from 1965 until his retirement in 2002 (with a break from 1993-1997 when he failed to get elected to the Senate by a single vote).
When he was first elected as chairman of North Tipperary County Council, he set off on a three-month tour of the United States, meeting Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and other prominent Irish-American politicians.
When Mona contracted cancer, she wrote to Padre Pio to intercede on her behalf and later wrote to seek his help with her husband’s drinking. Des later gave up drinking and the couple were devotees of the Italian priest for the rest of their lives.
Des’s gift for accumulating wealth was noticed by the Fianna Fail leader Jack Lynch, who was unhappy with Charlie Haughey and the “young Turks” of Fianna Fail after they had established a party fundraising committee called Taca, which organised lavish dinners with well-heeled developers in search of political connections.
Stung by charges of “low standards in high places”, Lynch moved to wind up Taca and appointed Hanafin to the role of full-time secretary of what was called “the Fianna Fail fundraising committee” in 1969. Operating from Room 547 of the Burlington Hotel, Des continued to successfully tap big business for funds, but in a far more discreet fashion.
When Haughey became leader of Fianna Fail in 1979, he moved to oust Hanafin and get control of his famous “black book”, which contained the names of subscribers to the party and the amounts they had donated. After a two-year stand-off, Haughey invited the committee, led by businessman Ken O’Reilly Hyland, to a lavish dinner in his Kinsealy home and all but one signed a document instructing Hanafin to hand over all papers to party headquarters in Mount Street.
Hanafin then devoted his considerable energies to the anti-abortion and anti-divorce causes and was even physically attacked at one stage for his views.
He was co-founder and chairman of the Pro-Life Movement during the socalled ‘abortion wars’ that lasted throughout the 1980s and 1990s. After his retirement from politics in 2002, Des remained as honorary president of the Pro-Life Movement up to his death.
He tried, without success, to get the divorce legislation overturned in the Supreme Court. He also publicly de- clared his opposition to samesex marriage and said he would be voting No. Despite his espousal of Catholic causes, he always insisted that he was not the “right-wing arch-conservative” that many of his detractors believed.
When he proposed to a journalist that he might write “a kind of autobiography”, they tossed around a few ideas before the journalist came up with a title From Beer to Eternity which, in any event, was never written.
Des’s daughter Mary was a minister in several of Fianna Fail’s governments before losing her seat in Dun Laoghaire at the 2011 general election, while Des’s son John succeeded him in the Senate, where he sat until 2011.
Des, who will be buried in Thurles after Requiem Mass at noon today, is survived by his wife Mona and two children.