Lenihan breaks silence over Haughey legacy

Heinrich

From the Irish Examiner 12 February 2007

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=25246-qqqx=1.asp

So what is Mr Lenihan saying? Is he afraid of Bertie?

Sometimes some thing are best left unsaid. Maybe this is because Bertie wants the Mahon Tribunal closed down as things there seem to be becoming "interesting

By Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent
CHARLES HAUGHEY is guilty of “untold damage”, Foreign Affairs Minister Conor Lenihan said last night in his most outspoken attack on the man who stole up to €250,000 from his father’s liver transplant fund.


Breaking his family’s silence on the disgraced former Taoiseach’s legacy, Mr Lenihan said Mr Haughey was an ambiguous figure and the sheer scale of his corruption might have actually hastened the clean-up of Irish politics.

“My view of Mr Haughey is that, in many ways, he did huge and untold damage to the political system and political culture of this country but that he also did enormously good things for the country itself.

“You could argue that he was good for the country but very bad for politics.

“Not withstanding the damage he did to politics, we have a much better political system today and perhaps ironically because of the kind of activity he was engaged in. I suspect we would have had to come through a process of cleansing and improving the standards in politics — it may be the fact that Mr Haughey actually hastened that rather than slowed it down,” he told TV3’s the Political Party.

The Lenihan family declined to condemn Mr Haughey when the Moriarty Tribunal revealed he misappropriated at least €56,000 from funds raised to cover the late Brian Lenihan’s medical expenses and may, in fact, have taken as much as €250,000.

Mr Lenihan was minister for foreign affairs when he underwent a liver transplant in the US in the run-up to the 1989 general election.

Mr Haughey arranged for a fund to pay for the cost of the operation not met by health insurance.

He set a fundraising target of between £150,000 and £200,000, despite the fact he knew no more than £100,000 would be required to cover the remainder of Mr Lenihan’s bill.

“Mr Haughey demonstrated a ... deliberate intention to use the opportunities provided by fund raising for Mr Lenihan ... to advance his personal finances,” the tribunal report said.

The tribunal found at least £265,000 might have been collected for the benefit of Mr Lenihan, although only Mr Haughey knew the full amount. Of these funds, no more than £70,283.06 went towards Mr Lenihan’s medical expenses.

InFront

Yeah saw this on The Political Party (I was flicking!) yesterday. He didn't seem interested in talking about it. Ursula H was pressing but he wasn't biting. I think 'outspoken attack' is a slight exaggeration on behalf of the Examiner. If it was an attack, it was a very tame one.

His aunt Mary O Rorke has basically said the same talking about this already, at the death of CJH last year as far as I remember. Different words, maybe - it was certainly in the same spirit.