A lot of water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since Charles J. Haughey acquired Abbeville House and estate, Kinsealy, Co Dublin, in 1969 for £120,000 (€152,3000) from a German industrialist, Mr Franz Zielkowski. Abbeville played a central role in the dramatic political life of Mr Haughey, writes Conor Lally.
A few years after the sale, Mr Haughey sold a modest tract of land on the estate for more than he had paid for the entire property, thus securing his financial future and that of his family.
Abbeville was remodelled by the renowned architect James Gandon who worked on the estate for the tax collector of Dublin, the Right Honourable John Beresford, around the turn of the 18th century. The house was a pet project for Gandon, one which he squeezed in between the design and construction of Dublin's Four Courts and Custom House.
Not content with the great Gandon's work, Mr Haughey made a few changes. He installed an Irish pub, which would become the focal point of the house. The bar and the panel section behind it were salvaged from a financial institution knocked down in Belfast. The bar's shelves are filled with old bottles and packets of Woodbine, Craven A and Russian brand cigarettes.
An old cash register is also included as is a sketch of the Mona Lisa, with Mr Haughey's face. There is also a painting of a point-to-point meeting, commissioned in 1985 by Mr Haughey from the artist Muriel Brandt. The work is populated by members of the Haughey clan. It also includes a Vote Haughey banner.
When he moved to Abbeville in the summer of 1969, Mr Haughey was 44 and had just been reappointed Minister for Finance in the new Jack Lynch cabinet. Before him stretched 23 more years in office.
He and his wife, Maureen, and their four children - Eimear, Ciarán, Conor and Seán - moved from their home, Grangemore, a Victorian mansion near Raheny. Abbeville was to become the scene of many a Haughey triumph. All the children celebrated their weddings there and his three sons built houses and lived on the estate.
In 1979 Mr Haughey threw a massive party attended by about 400 guests to celebrate his election as leader of Fianna Fáil. On November 11th, 1988, by which time he had become Taoiseach, a cabinet meeting was held in Abbeville House. Mr Haughey had asthma at the time and was too unwell to leave his home. He presided over the cabinet meeting around a circular mahogany table wearing his dressing gown.
When he left office in 1992, the financing of his lavish lifestyle was put under the microscope at the Moriarty and McCracken tribunals and a shadow was cast over the estate, which has remained to this day.
Indeed Mr Haughey would never have relinquished his beloved Abbeville, as he finally did yesterday, were it not for the demands the tribunals and Revenue had put on his funds.
In 1987, when unemployment had reached 17 per cent, Mr Haughey, the leader of the day, seemed immune to the economic crisis living the high life in Kinsealy. The reality was a lot different. Years of lavish spending, during a period of limited (legitimate) income had begun to bite. His champagne-taste lemonade-pockets lifestyle had seen the then Taoiseach's current account overdraft at Guinness & Mahon run to £261,000.
It was the payments by Mr Ben Dunne and others to Mr Haughey which resulted in demands from the Moriarty and McCracken tribunals in recent years, and ultimately the sale of Abbeville.