Of Charles J Haughey and his thoughts on economists

Date Published: {J}

We have to careful about who we quote in support of any argument. And I am very conscious that in proposing to quote one Charles J Haughey – and on a question of the economy – that it is tantamount to taking a few lines of scripture from the devil himself!

Haughey was, after all, the one who went on television to solemnly address the nation on the fact that we were “living way beyond our means” . . . at a time when, though we only discovered it years later, he was ‘in hock’ massively to the banks and was developing a taste for ‘touching’ people like Ben Dunne for a few bob.

Haughey also famously once stopped his chauffeur-driven car outside the AIB at BankCentre, sent for someone in management, and handed him a cheque for half of what he owed, telling the banker that he would have to settle for it!

Like a lot of others who like to quote scripture and prescribe how we might live, he had developed the happy knack of ‘do as I say . . . not as I do’. And it was only years later that we discovered the old rogue had any number of financial secrets to hide, and others we may never find out about.

That television address to the nation might have been forgotten by now if it hadn’t been for the series Reeling In The Years, where he still regularly appears from that infamous broadcast, complete with gravelly voice, a face that would be fit for a funeral, and a message of difficult times – for everyone else!

My only other impressions of him came through a very casual acquaintance. They were of a man who loved the good times. He dressed in suits that cost thousands and made of cloth that felt ‘like a million’, he wore ties and shirts that came from a specialist house (Charvet) in Paris, and liked to have a mistress about the place.

I do know that he was quite stingy with money, kept a great bundle of it in a safe in his house, and was notorious for not carrying any cash . . . so, if he ran into an incidental expense like buying a round of drinks at a function, he would approach a colleague, borrow a hunk of money, and never pay it back! In this instance, I have the names of those who were ‘stuck’.

Reason I mention Haughey at all is that he was also famously dismissive of economists. He contemptuously remarked that they might be handy to keep outside the door if you were working on a budget, in case you needed a long-tot done!

The vast majority of economists would appear to have failed us during the run-up the financial morass in which we find ourselves at the minute.

Of course there were a few voices which – famously – are now reported to have warned that we were getting into trouble, but most seemed to believe that we might gaily carry on as we were a few years ago. Well, I don’t remember too many warnings from those lines of economists who were on radio bulletins!

Economist Dr Alan Ahearne, the special adviser to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, presents one of the more accessible messages on the disaster which befell us . . . indeed in one line last week he summed up the situation.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.