Just Mary (13 page)

Brian set to working with these groups and other individuals to address all of the many queries and worries and real shortcomings faced by those working in the army and the navy. He established
a wonderful rapport with them. In this work he was greatly helped by Dr Brian Hillery, who was a trained psychologist. Brian did some sterling work and was able to resolve many of the issues and
problems very satisfactorily. Towards the end of that year, there was much speculation in the papers regarding the Presidential Election of the following year and which names the parties might put
forward as their nominees. Brian’s name began to be floated. I still don’t really know — none of us do — if Brian was greatly enlivened by the idea, but he went for it
anyway and was duly selected by Fianna Fáil as our candidate. All was well, you might think, but there was soon to be trouble in the Garden of Eden.

New Year 1990 came and went, and as the months passed, Brian’s campaign for the Presidency gathered pace. Other candidates entered the fray — among these, Mary Robinson, running for
Labour, but in an independent way. But Brian Snr was the firm favourite, and regarded by the vast majority as a sure-fire winner. In September 1990, however, on the back of an article in the press,
a row arose about who had telephoned the then President, Patrick Hillery in Áras an Uachtaráin in January 1982, asking him to refuse the then Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald’s
request to dissolve the Dáil. Brian Lenihan became involved in the so-called scandal, when it was alleged that he, on behalf of Charlie Haughey, had made such a call to Hillery in order to
persuade or pressurise him into a refusal. To its everlasting shame,
The Irish Times
then printed part of an interview which Brian had given to a young research student from
UCD
called Jim Duffy. In the interview, Brian admitted he had made the phone call to the President. In his book,
For the Record
(Blackwater Press, 1991), he would later explain
fully the exact circumstances of this interview.

Looking back, it’s amazing that this action ever achieved any sort of notoriety. But Des O’Malley as leader of the Progressive Democrats, with whom we were in government, demanded
that Brian should resign as Tánaiste and Minister, otherwise the
PDS
would force an immediate General Election. Brian refused to sign a letter of resignation drawn up
for him by Charlie Haughey, and the die was cast.

While all of this was brewing, Brian had kicked off his Presidential campaign in earnest in the constituency of Longford–Westmeath. It was already October and the election, which had been
set for 7 November, was fast approaching. We all went to Granard, where Brian landed by helicopter. On that cold, early autumn evening, we campaigned through Edgeworthstown, Rathowen, Mullingar,
Kinnegad, Tyrellspass, Kilbeggan and Moate. On each stop, people came out to meet him, shake his hand and to pledge their support. It was public knowledge of course that Brian’s resignation
was being called for. All the world loves a hero, and in the eyes of his loyal supporters, Brian was the hero battling against the might of Charlie Haughey.

I was standing on the step of the campaign bus as we pulled up in Moate. I looked to one side and who did I see, but Pádraig Flynn, getting out of his big Merc with that familiar,
grinning face.

‘What are you doing here, Minister Flynn?’ I said.

‘I am here to knock sense into all of you,’ he replied.

Of course, he had been sent by Charlie Haughey. I lost the rag completely and, using some very unparliamentary language, told him to get back across the Shannon from whence he had come; that he
was not wanted here. It was a raw message and he turned on his heels, got into his car and drove off to Athlone. By the time we arrived there ourselves, Flynn was already at the Prince of Wales
Hotel, where our meeting was to be held.

Garda numbers put the crowd that night in Athlone at around 4,000 people. The Prince of Wales Hotel was packed to capacity, as was the main street outside. People milled around, crowding in on
Brian, voicing their encouragement and support with low, raucous cries of, ‘No resignation, Brian! No resignation Brian!’ The issue had clearly formulated itself thus: Brian was
battling Charlie Haughey; he was not accepting the call to resign. There followed a tense election meeting in the Prince of Wales ballroom, as more crowds gathered to listen to Brian, who put up a
wonderful display. Albert Reynolds was there with us: it was his constituency as it was mine. At one point, Bertie Ahern turned up: he had obviously been sent by Charlie Haughey too. Bertie,
however, took one look at the crowds and disappeared back to Dublin — wise man!

A very interesting thing happened around this time, which has never been written about in the media or in any of the books of the period. In the Sunday papers of that Halloween weekend, I
happened upon a stray portion of an article, which said that there was to be an urgent Cabinet meeting the following week. Even though I was Minister for Education at the time, I had had no
notification of such a meeting. The Bank Holiday Monday dawned and still no word came. I telephoned Teresa O’Hanlon, the wife of Rory O’Hanlon, whom I regarded as a Cabinet friend.
Before I even had a chance to broach the matter, Teresa said, ‘Mary, are you not gone to Kinsealy? There’s a Cabinet meeting in Kinsealy today. Rory got word of it over the last few
days.’ I knew then that the meeting was about Brian and that I, even as a full Cabinet Minister, had simply not been invited. I was angry on two fronts: furious for Brian, and livid that I
had not been informed as was my right!

It transpired later that the meeting had been called by Charlie and held in his home in Kinsealy, so that he could urge all of the Cabinet members (except for me, of course) to sign a paper
calling for my brother’s resignation and to support him if necessary in the sacking. Here I must give credit to Albert Reynolds, who as I have said was my constituency colleague as a
TD
for Longford–Westmeath. At that surreptitious meeting, Albert simply refused to sign the paper which Charlie had prepared for them all.

Brian was sacked from the Cabinet just a few days later, on 31 October 1990. There was a formal vote in the Dáil, for which I had no choice but to side with the Fianna Fáil Party
in a vote of confidence in Charlie as Taoiseach and in the Cabinet. It was a terrible time for us all.

All the while, the Presidential campaign was gaining in momentum and intensity. In spite of everything that had happened, Brian’s response was that he would fight on regardless. And he
fought like a lion throughout the whole of Ireland, and everywhere crowds and crowds came out to meet him. To this day, I meet people who will say, ‘I canvassed with Brian in Listowel’;
‘I canvassed with Brian in Limerick’; ‘I canvassed with Brian in Carrickmacross.’ The party faithful really rallied to him and even after all his recent troubles, it was
clear that he still had huge support. As I have said, his main opponent was Mary Robinson. Late in the game, Alan Dukes had put forward the idea that Fine Gael should run a candidate and they
nominated Austin Currie, a good guy but one who, realistically, hadn’t a chance. Alan Dukes could be very Machiavellian. He wanted Mary Robinson: she was a member of that Davos group of
high-flying economists, academics and philosophers. Alan knew perfectly well that Austin Currie hadn’t a chance: he was just shoved in at the last moment in order to pump up Mary Robinson
with transfers and put Brian Lenihan out.

Although Brian was still riding high in the polls, there was another blow to his campaign, one particular Saturday afternoon, very close to Election Day. As I write this, I can remember that day
very well. I was listening to the radio as I was driving to Tyrellspass, where I was going to do some canvassing on my brother’s behalf with some local party members. I had tuned in to a
lunchtime news programme which included a live political debate featuring Michael McDowell, Pádraig Flynn and some other participants. McDowell was clearly in favour of Mary Robinson.
Suddenly Flynn saw fit to interrupt and proceeded to make some highly insulting remarks about Robinson and her ‘newfound interest in her family, and in fashion and her hairdo’, etc.,
all of which was grossly untrue. When I heard this interjection, I knew at once that it would have huge repercussions. And, of course, it did. But there is no doubt in my mind, or in the minds of
many other commentators at the time, that Flynn sealed Brian’s failure on that day. His attack on Robinson had the opposite effect to what he had apparently intended, as women voters in
particular suddenly shifted their loyalties and rallied in droves to support the Robinson campaign. This was very difficult for Brian to overcome and for us to quantify now just how damaging that
interview and Flynn’s comments were.

When the vote came around, Brian still came out top, as the number one first preference. As a family, we always felt a certain delight in the fact that he was the first choice of the people of
Ireland. To my mind, since the Presidency was for one job, the voting should never have been done under the ‘
PR
’ voting system anyway: it should have been a case
of ‘first past the post’. Of course, what happened was that when Austin Currie went out as expected, he gave the vote to Mary Robinson. So in that sense, Alan Dukes’s dream was
realised. Brian went along to the count at the
RDS
and when the final announcement came, he took it so manfully and in such valiant spirit that you couldn’t but be
enriched by his demeanour and by his courage. I cannot leave any account of the battle for this particular Presidency without saying that during her term as President, Mary Robinson appointed me to
the Council of State. It was a great honour to be so invited and I very much enjoyed my time in that service, which gave another enriching dimension to my life at that period.

To my mind, there is no doubt that Charlie Haughey did Brian a great wrong in having him sacked from Cabinet. Of course, Haughey would say afterwards that it was through loyalty to the party
that he had taken that course of action; that he had no other choice because the
PDS
were calling the shots, and so on. It wasn’t the case, however, that Brian and
Charlie Haughey were ever very close friends, because they weren’t — they were political allies. Some may say that Brian lost face at a certain point, with his ‘on mature
reflection’ remarks (when he appeared to contradict what he had said earlier about having made the calls to President Hillery). But in my view, he was done for by that stage anyway: someone
had it in for him, and wanted him to go. Jim Duffy, the researcher in question, was sent out to get Brian. In any case, even if he had made the calls, would it have really been so wrong? It
wasn’t such a big deal, but it was purposely blown up into something extraordinary.

In the final event, Brian was able to overcome all the terrible experiences he went through during those two years, and in the 1992 General Election he was triumphant once more. He died in 1995,
having had the extra five years of life which his surgeon had promised him following the transplant — and one bonus year besides. To his immediate and wider Lenihan family and indeed to the
Fianna Fáil Party, Brian will always represent our Camelot. He was the shining one whose lustre had never dimmed; the man who survived all of the years of politics without ever being tainted
with having done anything underhand or smacking of a venal transaction — unlike so many of the others of his time. I will always be proud of him, as will all of our family.

Chapter
7

T
he early 1990s was a wonderful time to be involved in Europe. Walls were coming down (literally!); everything was opening up; spring was
flowering. As Education Minister for Ireland, I remember well a visit to my Hungarian counterpart in Budapest. He had recently broken free of communist shackles and his party were in government but
he was still filled with a huge sense of paranoia, that elements of the previous regime were spying on him. I remember how I went up in an old-fashioned lift in a beautiful old building in Budapest
to meet him. He brought me into his inner office, closed the door, checked all the windows, looked behind the pictures and said, ‘I have to be very careful. The communist spies are watching
us all.’ Now I didn’t know if they were or not — how would I? But I felt greatly enriched by the whole meeting between us. He was a wonderful person: a professor of history with
huge, terrific ideas on education, and I very much enjoyed working with him.

In 1990, Ireland held the Presidency of the European Council of Ministers for six months, and I can remember the great leadership Charlie Haughey gave in this context. For me as Minister for
Education, it meant that each time in the course of those six months that the Council of Ministers for Education met in Brussels, I would chair the meeting and preside over the discussion of the
issues on the agenda. It was during this period I met and had a very fruitful relationship with Kenneth Clarke, who was then Minister for Education in the
UK
. When I see him
now on
TV
as a serving Minister in David Cameron’s government, I think to myself, ‘Well, you really lasted the course, Kenneth.’ He was quirky then, as he
is quirky now, but also very intelligent and astute.