‘I was trying to help him, and say for f**k sake, would you cop on’

“The fear at that point in time was that I could have been asked, which I wasn’t, was I off tipping Charlie off, which I was. I was trying to help him, and say for f **** sake, would you cop on, it’s going to come out, understand what’s there,” said Smyth.

Haughey didn’t take Smyth’s advice. Smyth, under oath, disclosed what he knew, in a pivotal moment that ultimately forced the former Taoiseach to confess.

Smyth, who was subpoenaed by the McCracken Tribunal, says he “didn’t have a choice”. “I’ve always taken being a lawyer more seriously than anything else,” he says. “There would be certain people that would basically feel that maybe I could have turned a blind eye and been less lawyerish than I was. I don’t see it that way. I love the law. I believe in it and I make no apology for doing what I believed was right,” he said.

He thinks Haughey created the circumstances of his own downfall, although he doesn’t believe he was corrupt. “Not at all,” he scoffs. “Haughey was a great character, great bonhomie, he felt that if somebody wanted to give him money, you know he had a lifestyle to lead, why not? He liked the Charvet shirts and he liked the nice wines and he was one of these characters,” he says.

“To me, corrupt means that you give someone money to do something for you. He did nothing, as far as I’m aware, for Ben. It was Ben’s decision to give him the money and Ben decided that he liked Charlie and he gave it to him.”

Smyth says Haughey didn’t hold it against him but adds: “While he wasn’t out to tear out my guts, he wasn’t inviting me out to lunch either.”

With stories like these to tell, Smyth has no problem getting attention. When he talks to people about suicide prevention, he say eyes usually glaze over. Not because they are bored but because they are “not comfortable”.

“I’m on the golf course and someone says to me, you’re involved in that three jobs, is it? I say ‘yeah, it’s the 3Ts’. That would be on the first hole. I guarantee you, when they get to the bar, they say ‘I must tell you something, my daughter, or my son, or my nephew or somebody, died by suicide’.”