Humbert School: "Charles James Haughey was a Mayoman of distinction . . . an optimist, a pragmatist, exciting and tenacious," former EU commissioner Padraig Flynn said last night.
He said that Mr Haughey had "rejected communism and socialism", but believed the ultimate purpose of all economic activity was social. Mr Haughey saw economic development and social justice as going "hand in hand", Mr Flynn told the Humbert School dinner in Ballina, Co Mayo.
Mr Flynn offered two sentences as epitaphs for Mr Haughey. "O passio graviore debit deus qui quoque finem" from Virgil, which he translated as "the evil that is done to you, God will settle in the end". And the words from Frank Sinatra's song My Way - a favourite of his and Mr Haughey's - " . . . the record shows, I took the blows, and did it my way".
Describing Mr Haughey as a man "with steely eyes and steely intelligence", he spoke of his charm and presence, "which could fill a room". However, "he was not a tall man, which was one reason I do not appear in the front in any photograph with him," he said.
He gave examples of the Haughey legacy which "had helped so many people breathe easier" - the 1964 Succession Act, Free Legal Aid, free travel/ESB and TV for the elderly, the IFSC, the national understandings in industrial relations and his contributions to cultural and artistic life.
He recalled the successful Knock airport endeavours of "Charles James and Mgr James " and poet Paul Durcan's lines about their success there, "despite opposition from pedigree economists, calculators and sophists of Dublin and the Pale".
Mr Haughey, he said, was "a formidable parliamentarian . . . a formidable opponent" who "you crossed at your peril". The former taoiseach believed "a united Ireland was in the natural order of things" and he recalled a 1963 speech Haughey made at the Irish Club in London where he said unification "will come to pass. Meanwhile, we won't sulk in our tents."
Mr Haughey believed in free enterprise. "As he said at the 1976 ardfheis, we were 'neither the prisoners of the left nor the servants of the right, but the pragmatists of the centre'."
Former Irish Press editor and historian Tim Pat Coogan lauded the decision that this year's Humbert School dinner should be in honour of the late Mr Haughey. "He deserves a lot more kudos than not," he said. He felt Mr Haughey's later bad judgments may have been the result of a car accident he had been involved in during the 1960s when he was Minister for Justice and suffered head injuries.
On the Arms Trial he said he believed Mr Haughey had been "fitted out. It is clear guns were brought in, but it is far from clear if it was an illegal effort."
The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, was praised by One in Four director Colm O'Gorman. Commenting on the Church's recent handling of the clerical child sex abuse issue, he said: "Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in particular has confounded so many expectations and my own in particular. I remember hearing of the appointment of this Vatican diplomat to Dublin and asking, 'What's this?' It is quite extraordinary how he has confronted the issue, publicly and privately - most importantly, privately - where his integrity has been obvious and is seen to be."
However, he did not feel the archbishop's approach was reflected by others in the institutional Roman Church.
