Charles Haughey, 80; Former Irish Prime Minister Was Shadowed by Ethics Concerns

Charles Haughey, who served four terms as Ireland’s prime minister in a career overshadowed by ethical questions, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer, his family said. He was 80.

Haughey died at his mansion north of Dublin. His wife, Maureen, and their four children were at his bedside. He is expected to receive a state funeral, probably Friday.

As leader of Ireland’s most popular party, Fianna Fail, Haughey oversaw four scandal-marred governments. The first two, from 1979 to 1982, nearly bankrupted the country. The second two, from 1987 to 1992, slashed spending and laid the foundation for the economic boom dubbed the Celtic Tiger.

He was “the great survivor,” bouncing back after being put on trial for allegedly running guns to Northern Ireland, and again after a series of scandals in 1982 that included a murder suspect being found at the home of Haughey’s attorney general.

“If I saw Mr. Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads with a stake driven through his heart, politically speaking, I should continue to wear a clove of garlic around my neck, just in case,” wrote Conor Cruise O’Brien, a former Irish diplomat, in 1982.

Haughey’s followers saw him as a lovable rogue, courageous and visionary. Enemies detested him and deemed him the source of every ill in Irish politics.

“He radiated an aura associated in the public mind with a Renaissance potentate -- with his immense wealth, his retinue of loyal retainers, his Florentine penchant for faction fighting, his patronage of the arts, his distinctive personality, at once crafty and conspiratorial, resilient and resourceful, imaginative yet insecure,” the historian J.J. Lee wrote in 1989.

Corruption tribunals established that Haughey secretly solicited more than $10 million from businessmen. Haughey insisted he gave no favors in return.

The money financed Haughey’s lavish lifestyle.

Born in rural County Mayo, Haughey earned degrees in accountancy and law. In 1951, he married the daughter of Sean Lemass, who became prime minister in 1959 and made Haughey a Cabinet minister two years later.

After Lemass resigned in 1966, Haughey became finance minister in Jack Lynch’s government and introduced a unique tax-free status for resident artists and writers.

In 1969, Haughey was accused of coordinating arms purchases for shipment to the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, and Lynch fired him.

Haughey and his co-defendants were eventually acquitted, but his political career was presumed to be over. Instead, he regained a Cabinet post when Lynch led Fianna Fail to a landslide victory in 1977.

Haughey backed a free-spending policy that plunged Ireland into debt, then won the party leadership after a fiscal crisis led Lynch to resign in 1979. Haughey, in serious debt, seized control of Fianna Fail’s fundraising. With no laws regulating party finances or donations, he collected money directly through checks made out to “cash” or friendly third parties, investigators later established.

Haughey showed his political skill in 1979 in making contraception available to married couples, with a doctor’s prescription, despite the opposition of the Catholic hierarchy. “An Irish solution to an Irish problem,” he said, coining an oft-repeated phrase.

He didn’t last long as prime minister because of a wave of 1982 scandals: A Haughey aide accused of stuffing ballot boxes was acquitted on a technicality, a murder suspect was found hiding in the attorney general’s home, and two journalists’ telephones were tapped.

Haughey described the discovery of the murder suspect as “grotesque,” “unbelievable,” “bizarre” and “unprecedented” -- instantly immortalized in Irish political discourse as “GUBU.”

He returned to power in 1987 but was forced to resign in 1992 after new evidence that he had authorized the 1982 phone tapping emerged.