The Trib (29 page)

Coincidentally, Lala had also become pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl on 29 May 2002. She already had a daughter, Tata. In an April 2004 letter to the Irish Adoption Board, solicitors instructed by Lala and Joe Dowse stated that her pregnancy and the subsequent birth had ‘interfered' with the adoption and the bonding with Tristan.

TRISTAN DOWSE:

The boy, given the name Tristan by Joe and Lala Dowse, was born on 26 June 2001 and adopted by them in August 2001, when he was two months old. At the time, the married couple were living in Indonesia and had tried unsuccessfully to conceive a child of their own for some time. After they decided they no longer wanted him, Tristan was placed into an orphanage in Bogor in May 2003. He spoke only English, was one of only two children under five there, and reportedly cried uncontrollably.

Although he settled into the private orphanage and formed friendships with older children, in May 2005 the Indonesian authorities decided to move Tristan to a larger state-run orphanage for Muslim children which segregated the children according to age.

But the High Court here was told that by July 2005 ‘Tristan was described as being hurt, confused and somewhat bewildered'.

Things began to look up for the boy after an RTÉ documentary found his birth mother, Suryani, and they were reunited later that year. Suryani explained that she had been pressurised and deceived into giving up her son by a baby broker named Rosdiana and a nurse at the maternity unit where she gave birth. Investigations by the Indonesian authorities found she was not paid for the adoption.

Eventually, after a lengthy reunion process, Suryani was allowed to take her son home to the port city of Tegal, about 350 km from Jakarta. Tristan is now known as Erwin Reynaldi. Rosdiana was subsequently convicted of her crimes and sentenced to nine years in prison. Her daughter Reta, who took part in the illegal adoption of Tristan and up to eighty other babies, also received an eight-year sentence.

WHAT THE HIGH COURT SAID:

Tristan's case caused major public concern in Ireland and around the world when details of his situation emerged. In July 2005, the Attorney General commenced proceedings on behalf of Tristan, as an Irish citizen. As part of these proceedings, he sought a declaration that the Dowses had failed in their duty of care for and support of Tristan, and sought orders that they should do so.

But Joe and his wife took a counter action that August seeking to have his name removed from the register of foreign adoptions. The hearing of both applications together took place in camera, as they involved a child. However, Judge John McMenamin ruled that much of the judgment should be made public.

In his High Court ruling delivered in January 2006, McMenamin acceded to the Dowse's application. But he made clear that since Tristan had been reunited with his natural mother, compelling the Dowses to take care of him outside Indonesia was not an option.

As a result, he ordered that the boy receive a €20,000 lump sum, a monthly payment of €350 until he is eighteen – half of which will be invested for him by the High Court – and then a further lump sum of €25,000 when he reaches maturity.

Under the ruling, Tristan's mother, Suryani is his guardian while he retains his Irish citizenship and he is a ward of the High Court. He also retains succession rights to any estate of Mr and Mrs Dowse.

18 June 2006

I
t was a Saturday night in the Main Hall of the RDS in the mid-1980s. The audience, which had been worked into a frenzy of excitement, was standing, dancing on the chairs. But the subject of its worship was not U2, Bruce Springsteen or one of the other international rock acts that periodically lifted the gloom in the recession-hit Ireland of that era.

Incredible as it may seem in today's politically apathetic climate, the adoration was directed exclusively towards a politician. However, this was no ordinary politician, but one Charles J Haughey ... the dominant and most controversial figure in Irish politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

Haughey was out of government. The disgrace of the GUBU era was still fresh in the memory, as was his Houdini-style survival in a series of incredibly bitter leadership challenges. The slightly aging figure standing at the podium had served two terms as Taoiseach, but without any tangible success to show for it.

Yet the reception Haughey was receiving was akin to a returning Messiah. The strains of ‘Rise and Follow Charlie' filled the hall and the swaying masses made clear their unbridled passion for their leader. Jack Lynch before him and Bertie Ahern after him may have enjoyed wider popularity, but neither man ever attracted such devotion from the Fianna Fáil masses.

Haughey revelled in the moment. A chieftain being acknowledged by ‘his people'. For that was how he saw himself. He may have been a Republican, but certainly not in the French egalitarian sense. Not for him the traditional de Valera/Fianna Fáil values of austerity and simplicity. He had a taste for French cuisine, fine wine, expensive clothes, and high art, buying a fine house and hunting with hounds.

The contradictions in Haughey's persona, and in his legacy, are too numerous to ignore: the fire-in-the-belly Republican from Donnycarney; the darling of the working classes who lived like a lord of the manor; the brilliant minister who was seized by indecision on becoming Taoiseach; the politician who gave us the infamous Talbot workers deal as well as the incredible success story that is the IFSC; the wrecker of the economy in the early 1980s turned saviour seven years later; the ‘teapot diplomat' who had been at the centre of the Arms Trial and subsequently opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement; the super-confident, at times arrogant, whizz-kid who felt the need to surround himself with the trappings of an aristocrat.

He was an intellectual snob, who despised the bourgeois values of businessmen he regarded as boring, dull and uncultured, but who relied on hand-outs from them to fund his opulent lifestyle. He was the politician who told the country that we were living ‘way beyond our means' at a time when he was himself up to his neck in debt. He regarded himself as a man of destiny yet within hours of becoming Taoiseach, he was willing to tolerate a twenty-nine-year-old upstart demanding: ‘Tell me the truth. How much do you f**king owe?' He was the most divisive politician since de Valera, a leader who managed to skillfully run a coalition government with his arch nemesis.

Despite, or maybe because of these contradictions, his influence over four decades of the Irish State's existence was enormous. Even now, a decade-and-a-half after his resignation, he casts a long shadow over Irish politics.

In his resignation speech, he quoted Othello ... ‘I have done the state some service and they know it, no more of that' ... but to his many critics, Haughey was more an Iago than Othello.

As far back as 1960, Gerry Boland forecast that Haughey would one day ‘drag down the party in the mire'. Boland's fears were shared by others. It was an open secret in the party that other senior figures, most notably the hugely respected founding fathers, Frank Aiken and Seán MacEntee, were seriously worried about his growing influence.

Yet such views did nothing to delay a meteoric rise within the party. He had qualified as an accountant and set up the firm of Haughey Boland in 1951 with his old school friend Harry Boland. But Haughey's real ambitions were clearly political. He was elected to the Dáil in 1957 and was promoted in 1960 by the Taoiseach, his father-in-law, Seán Lemass, to parliamentary secretary. In the same year, he acquired a house in Grangemore in Raheny, on forty-five acres of land.

The following year, Haughey was elevated to the cabinet as justice minister. He quickly made an impression, introducing legislation such as the Succession Act, which protected the inheritance rights of wives, and the Extradition Act. He also drew up a ten-point programme in his first month of office, highlighting the crushing of the IRA as a primary objective. The Special Criminal Court was reactivated and in less than a year the IRA called off its campaign.

Haughey was a young man in a hurry. The powerful secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, later wrote that ‘while he was in Justice, Haughey was a dynamic minister. He was a joy to work with and the longer he stayed, the better he got.'

But the top civil servant also recalled a less attractive side to Haughey's personality. When Berry objected to a blatantly political promotion in the immigration service, Haughey flung the departmental file at him and the papers were strewn across the floor of the minister's office.

While Haughey's next portfolio was less successful – as agriculture minister, he became involved in a series of controversies with the powerful farmers' lobby – his flamboyant lifestyle ensured that his profile continued to soar. Around this time, Conor Cruise O'Brien, later to become an arch political opponent, wrote of him: ‘Haughey's general style of living was remote from the traditional Republican and de Valera austerities. He had made a great deal of money and he obviously enjoyed spending it, in a dashing eighteenth century style, of which horses were conspicuous symbols. He was a small man and, when dismounted, he strutted rather. His admirers thought he resembled the Emperor Napoleon, some of whose better known mannerisms he cultivated. He patronised, and that is the right word, the arts. He was an aristocrat in the proper sense of the word: not a nobleman or even a gentleman, but one who believed in the right of the best people to rule, and that he himself was the best of the best people. He was at any rate better, or at least more intelligent and interesting, than most of his colleagues. He was considered a competent minister, and spoke in parliament with bored but conclusive authority. There were enough rumours about him to form a legend of sorts.'

Haughey added to the legend by socialising with cabinet colleagues such as Donagh O'Malley and Brian Lenihan, becoming, in the memorable words of Tim Pat Coogan, ‘the epitome of the men in the mohair suits'.

Stories about their drinking exploits in the Fianna Fáil haunt of Groome's Hotel were legion. They also frequented the upmarket Russell Hotel, where Haughey socialised with financiers and builders.

By the mid-1960s, Haughey was a candidate for the leadership of Fianna Fáil. However, amid fears that the party would split between Haughey and Colley factions, Haughey made a tactical decision to withdraw from the 1966 leadership contest and backed Jack Lynch. In return, Lynch made him finance minister. The country was in the middle of an economic boom, allowing Haughey scope for some imaginative reforms. He introduced free travel, subsidised electricity for OAPs and endeared himself to the arty set by abolishing income tax for artistic work.

He also introduced a special provision in the 1969 Finance Act that opponents would claim provided a direct financial benefit to himself. In the general election of that year, Haughey's wealth, long a subject of fascination, became a big issue. The
Evening Herald
revealed that the minister had sold his home at Grangemore to well-known property developer Matt Gallagher for over £200,000 and bought the Abbeville estate, the former summer home for lord lieutenants in Ireland, partly designed by James Gandon, and its 250 acres for £140,000. Haughey's line of defence – one he was to stick to when questions were raised about the origin of his wealth, right up to the setting-up of the tribunals in Dublin Castle – was to object ‘to my private affairs being used in this way. It is a private matter between myself and the purchaser.'

But Fine Gael's Gerald Sweetman claimed that Haughey had benefited from legislation he had introduced himself, amending part of the 1965 Finance Act so that he did not have to pay tax on the profits. Haughey was left in the clear when, after he referred the matter to the Revenue Commissioners, they reported that ‘no liability to income tax or surtax would have arisen' even if the act had not been amended.