The only thing new is the history we don t know. Fortunately, our education has been greatly improved by the Ben Dunne Payments to Politicians Tribunal, at Dublin Castle. We now understand at least a little more about the makers, breakers, shakers, fakers and liberty-takers who run this nation.
Day 17 alone (Tuesday, July 15th) would qualify as a fully-fledged degree course in itself. This was a masterclass everyone wanted to attend. The eagerly-anticipated date when, in theory, the fabled Charles J. Haughey would finally come clean and reveal how his fingers had become so nimbly dextrous at pulling on the udders of some of the country s biggest cashcows.
A man who had stealthily cultivated a myth of wealth and splendour was about to stand exposed as a shameless pan-handler, incapable of putting caviar on the table without the kindness of philanthropic strangers. It was to be a defining moment in the annals of Irish politics, the holding of the alms trial.
Given such billing, it s hardly surprising that interest among the public in Haughey s testimony was intense, and somewhere between 500 and 700 civilians turned up to watch the show. They came for a variety of reasons; some to enjoy a hanging, others to provide moral support for their fallen hero, still others just to savour the sights, sounds and smells of a genuine media circus for free.
Queuing in the courtyard of Dublin Castle had begun at 2am, with the arrival of a man who described himself as a staunch Fianna Failer. By 7.20am, when Charlie himself was driven through the gates, thereby dodging the slugabed reporters and photographers who had yet to appear at the scene, the public contingent numbered a dozen or so. Within an hour, the figure had reached several hundred.
At 8.30, the staff opened the doors of the Castle buildings. The first 60 lucky campers were allowed into the King George Hall, the Tribunal chamber, where they were given ringside seats for the main event, alongside the massed ranks of respected journalists and Conor Cruise O Brien.
The rest of us were led downstairs to a large wood-panelled room with carpets as ostentatious, as decadent, as vividly-coloured and as shag-piled as the Charlie Haughey legend itself.
Rows upon rows of cushioned chairs were arranged facing a huge pair of closed-circuit television screens which were already relaying live pictures from the Tribunal chamber above us. Through the marvels of modern technology, we were thus able to observe two hours of uncut, as-it-happens footage featuring a bloke with a beard arranging jugs of water on tables, and a Frasier Crane lookalike on the public benches folding and re-folding, folding and re-folding his sports jacket (I hadn t realised that there was an actual sport involved in owning such a coat).
When, by 10am, the 200 seats in our auditorium were filled, yet another room (this one equipped with a single giant TV screen and a further capacity of 200) was unlocked, and quickly filled. The audience comprised all sorts; there were pensioners, young couples, office groups, holidaying daytrippers, poorly-groomed students, wide-eyed loners and more than a smattering of legal-eagles. The rotund, pinstriped fiftysomething in the row directly across from me was heavily engrossed in a book entitled The Methods Of Great Cross-Examiners As Used In Famous Trials. Perhaps he was anticipating that a further chapter would soon be required for an updated edition.
At least half the assembled individuals seemed to have brought pre-packed sandwiches and snacks. One resourceful Mom and Pop had an entire four-course breakfast (oranges, bacon-rolls, scones n marmalade and tubs of yoghurt) which they ate out of a Tupperware bowl.
This is lovely, isn t it? said an elegantly-dressed lady to my immediate left, as she munched a Penguin biscuit. Wouldn t it be very be nice if we could come in here and do this every Tuesday?
At 10.35am, Justice Brian McCracken walked in and everyone in the Tribunal chamber stood up. Downstairs, in the public viewing area, two middle-aged women also stood up. They were undeterred by the giggles from those about them, and remained on their feet until they saw Justice McCracken give the be-seated nod on the TV screen.
With barely an iota of ado, Denis McCullough SC, counsel for the Tribunal, called Mister Charles J. Haughey to the stand. The former Taoiseach strode forward with glacial deliberation, dressed in a sober slate-grey suit and a slightly tipsy powder-blue tie. He was carrying a brown folder which he plopped down on the ledge as he entered the witness box (the folder probably contained a map charting the most direct route out of the witness box you know what Charlie s memory is like).
Haughey will buy and sell the lot of ye, wait til you see, a wheezy man in the row behind me gleefully assured all and sundry. I thought that the very reason this Tribunal had been called in the first place is that some of us worry that he may already have done so.
No stranger to swearing, as regular Hot Press readers will know better than most, Charlie took the proffered Bible in his right hand like a seasoned pro and proceeded to reap his first big laugh of the day in the viewing room.
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, CJH solemnly pledged, and it was as if he was some much-loved stand-up who, finally yielding to intense public demand, had emerged from 30 years of secluded retirement, for one night only, to deliver again his most popular catchphrase. People were slapping their thighs and clenching their ruptured sides. Comic history meets historical comedy.
Back in the Tribunal room proper, of course, nobody was laughing, not even the lawyers (they d obviously been all the way to the bank earlier in the morning). The witness was reading out his prepared proclamation of apology and regret to Justice McCracken, explaining in mitigation that his recollection of events has become increasingly remote and diffused.
Those who have blithely said that there isn t a single sincere sentence in this statement are wrong. I believe that Charlie was being completely frank when he came to the end of his text and forthrightly, earnestly and, without so much as a blink, uttered the words, Thank you, Chairman.
While CJH read, the closed-circuit camera zoomed in. His features looked puffy, puckered and pursed, rather like a balloon the morning after an all-night party which, given his present predicament, is exactly what it has become.
Though now shrouded in the wrinkled crepe of old age, the Haughey profile still retains the imperious, majestic bearing of a Roman emperor. Charlie s is a head that was born to repose in great bronzed busts. It d probably make an ideal subject for great bronzed statues too.
There was something else I discerned about the Haughey countenance. Viewed from certain angles, it s a sort of human cash register, a living, breathing collection plate.
Note the coin-slot eyes and the thin, credit-card-scanner lips. Are they bags beneath his eyes or moneybags? And what s that crinkled, crumpled forehead if not a stack of dog-eared tenners? During Des Traynor s day, I have no doubt that a facility was made available for benefactors who preferred to pay through the nose.
Charlie Haughey s word may well be his bond, but did he issue receipts with a nod and a wink? Is his the face that launched a thousand chits?
Charlie Haughey s apologists loved to tell us that no other Irish statesman could get on or off a plane quite like him. What they neglected to mention was that they were talking about the astral plane.
The sensory convulsion entailed in rapid inter-dimensional travel is the only rational explanation for Mr. Haughey s apparent bewilderment about the detail of his life. The culture-shock induced by regularly hopping in and out of different space/time continuums would also account for his confusion about how, for instance, ownership of a mansion, an estate, a yacht, a stable of thoroughbreds, a private island and an ocean of vintage wine or is that champagne would constitute what might be described as a lavish lifestyle on planet Earth.
Charlie should really have attended these hearings in one of the seats set aside for the general public, so astonished and startled did he claim to be by the account the Tribunal offered of his private monetary affairs and personal life.
His gameplan was to tip the beam of justice in his favour by blaming his former business advisor, the late (and therefore largely unsubpoenable) Des Traynor, for all financial irregularities. Then, to further incline that beam by asserting that what money he did have at his disposal was spent to pay for an existence so austere it would humble a Trappist.
My work was my lifestyle, affirmed the hermit of Abbeville. When I was in office, I worked every day, all day. There was no room for any sort of an extravagant lifestyle. I d just like to make that point.
The viewing room audience erupted in a krakatoa of hoots and hollers. Grown men and women were rendered helpless with weeping mirth. One or two were so overcome with hilarity that they actually leapt to their feet. What about Terry? chortled the lady by my side. Maybe the island he owns is really Lough Derg, suggested a Corkonian wag from the back of the hall.
The case Charlie was trying to make may have been flakier than a waiting room full of alopecia patients, but you ve got to hand it to the guy; he knows how to deliver a good line with the froidest of sang froid.
Buoyed up by their idol s brazen gall, the sizeable cadre of ardent Haugheyites among the assemblage soon grew more bold and vocal; they too began to chuckle and clap, whenever they felt their man managed a stylish parry or riposte. Bat-blind and stone-deaf to the tawdry, grubby nature of the spectacle before them, they were only interested in waving the team scarf and stamping their feet on the terraces.
The Haugheyites loved it when Charlie told Denis McCullough that he had been enormously impressed by the thoroughness and assiduousness and investigative powers of the Tribunal ( Oh, you wily old fox! trumpeted an awestruck disciple). They raised the rafters when he explained how he hated to use the phrase economical with the truth because it has been flogged to death. They became audibly excited as he persisted in his refusal to characterise his earlier lies to the Tribunal as untruths ( That account of events was short of the truth, insisted Charles J. Hubris).
With the fluency of a stuck record, he persisted with his mantras about being unaware of such matters, fearing the consequences of disclosure and my trusted friend and advisor. It got to the stage where he was chanting the words Des Traynor so often that I wondered if he was suffering from some peculiarly virulent strain of the DTs.
As the two-hour testimony wore on, the opposing factions in the viewing room became ever-more raucous, their approbation and guffaws getting louder and more melodramatic by the minute. Denis McCullough was not conducting his interrogation in jugular vein. At times, he was more coaxing than accusatory, speaking to the witness in the same tone of voice that a photographer might use to persuade a topless model into more provocative poses.
Nevertheless, everybody felt that they had seen and heard enough to allow them come to a firm decision. It was simply a case of whether you believed Charlie Haughey or whether you had been listening to him.
As the public poured out onto the cobblestones of the Dublin Castle courtyard, after Charlie had completed his evidence, the extemporaneous reviews came thick and fast:
. . . The hard-necked oul bollocks . . .
He was brilliant, he used no notes and didn t even take a single sip of water.
Magisterial!
. . . Jail the lying swine . . .
There were, naturally, many other feelings expressed but I d stopped listening; I was too busy scrutinising the faces of those I d already heard voice their opinion, hoping to ascertain what a person who uses the term Magisterial! in everyday conversation looks like.
We hung around the courtyard for over 30 minutes waiting for Charlie to finish his complimentary tea and sandwiches and to come outside for what we were told would be a brief photo-call. It was lunchtime now and a couple of hundred passing rubbernecks had joined the throng. Security personnel shepherded the heaving swarm back from the entrance, and sealed us off behind rope barriers.
Bobbing around the prow of the crush was a small, spinning top of a man, a Dubbalin pensioner, in a tan windbreaker, who was simultaneously pursuing about six separate quarrels with maybe a dozen different people. His dilated pupils oval and gleaming like twin miraculous medals, he was shouting and gesticulating indignantly in all directions.
Charlie done nothing wrong, he bellowed. Ask me any question about what he did and I ll answer it for you. I ll explain it all.
Charlie was a scrounger and a swindler, retorted one adversary.
He s up to his neck in it, said another.
He did nothing wrong! yelled the OAP, shouting all other voices down. Ask me anything and I ll answer it for you. You re afraid to. You know I ll answer it.
He ll take you on one at a time, confidently proclaimed a stocky woman in tweed who I took to be the pensioner s missus.
You re cowards, spat the old man derisively when his debating challenge was declined, and people started to look the other way. You know you can t ever pin anything on Charlie and you re sick about it. You re cowards, the lot of you!

The famously world-weary Nokl Coward was known to conjure up his most beaming smile when posing for photographs by baring his clenched teeth and softly saying sillycunts rather than cheese . I ve often wondered if it s a trick that Charlie Haughey also uses. There is certainly something about his trademark sloe-eyed grin that is darkly contemptuous of those it shines upon.
When he emerged from Dublin Castle into a lightning squall of popping flashbulbs, Charlie s smile was fixed and wan, but I could have sworn that it had an undercurrent of the old sillycunts about it. The smile brightened a little when a burst of cheers and applause rang out, and Charlie waved defiantly in response. Big mistake. Almost instantaneously, the acclamations were submerged beneath a torrential mudslide of booing, catcalls and jeers: Perjurer! Liar! Lock him up!
There was no smile whatsoever as Haughey was bundled towards his waiting Mercedes by his minders. When an elderly, but surprisingly fleet-footed, fan broke through the security cordon and rushed forward to shake hands, the expression on Charlie s face was one of pure, unadulterated gratitude.
The man who once gloried in treating even his most devoted supporters as mangy lapdogs unfit to lick the soles of his Italian leather shoes was now almost pathetically pleased to accept a friendly greeting, any friendly greeting.
As Charlie s Merc sped back to Kinsealy, leaving behind a public jury that believes there is indeed much that he has decided to kinseal, the media pack turned its attention on the aged admirer who had just risked a pummelling from bodyguards to shake the hand of The Boss.
His name is Frank Harrison. He s 78, a native of County Kerry, who has lived in Fairview, in the heart of Charlie s North Dublin constituency, for over 30 years. Before today, Frank s primary claim to fame was that he is the country s oldest waiter, and has worked at the Trocadero restaurant, on Dublin s Andrew Street, for decades.
I m a Republican first, and Charlie is a Republican, declared Frank. I ve always liked Charlie Haughey, all my life. He saw them all off. Margaret Thatcher, the lot of them. He brought in great things for the old people, like the free travel. He s the greatest living Irishman.
A bespectacled reporter facetiously asked Frank if Charlie had slipped him an envelope of cash, a few quid pro quo, so to speak.
He did not, retorted Frank icily, but Charlie Haughey gave me this and I ll never forget him for it.
Frank Harrison produced his laminated OAP travel pass from his inside pocket, and proudly hoisted it in the air.
The only thing new is the history we don t know.