I spent the summer of 1997 touring the country visiting Fianna Fáil councillors in a very unsuccessful attempt to get elected to Seanad Éireann. It wasn't an entirely wasted exercise, however, because it was interesting to meet those hundreds of men and women, usually in their own homes, and spend time listening to their political stories.
As well as being members of their local authority, most of them were also long-time office holders in their local Fianna Fáil comhairle ceantair or comhairle Dáil.
Many of them were ardent Haugheyites. They had been the marshals of the widespread support within the Fianna Fáil organisation which Haughey enjoyed throughout his political career. A few of them told of how they had been on the Leinster House plinth in November 1979 when he was first elected leader and they were again at Leinster House to cheer him after he survived various parliamentary party heaves in the early 1980s.
Some of them went back even further with Haughey. They stood by "Charlie" at the time of the arms trial. These were the people who later extended invitations to Haughey to be the guest speaker at their local comhairle ceantair supper dances, thereby making available the "chicken and chips" circuit which kept the Haughey political flame alive during his wilderness years on the backbenches in the mid-1970s.
For decades these Haughey loyalists had put up with the often good-natured taunts of activists from other parties who slagged them off for supporting a leader who they claimed was only a gun-runner and a chancer. In the political worldview of these ardent Haughey supporters their man was misunderstood because he never got a fair hearing from a biased, liberal, Dublin media who were all infatuated with "Garret the Good".
For Haughey loyalists the late 1980s were the best of times. They could feel vindicated as even many of his former opponents hailed Haughey's efforts to tackle the country's financial problems and turn the economy around.
The summer of 1997, however, was not a good time for those who had stuck with Haughey through thick and thin. Many of the conversations on the Seanad campaign trail that summer turned gradually to events taking place at Dublin Castle where, faced with the hard evidence unearthed by the McCracken tribunal's rigorous pursuit of the money trail to the Cayman Islands and back, Haughey had been forced to acknowledge that he had indeed got a lot of money from Ben Dunne.
Haughey supporters within Fianna Fáil now spoke about these revelations in tones of disbelief and even hurt. Until that point many had allowed themselves to believe that newspaper reports about big cheques from Dunne were just the latest spiteful utterances of an anti-Haughey media who could not even leave the man alone in his retirement. Now their certainty about their hero had been shaken.
There was only one man these Fianna Fáil activists loved more than Charles Haughey and that was Brian Lenihan. As an able, popular and accessible minister, a political orator of the old school who was the star turn at annual ardfheiseanna and a loyal lieutenant of the leader, Lenihan epitomised everything they felt a senior Fianna Fáil politician should be. They had worried about Lenihan, firstly through his illness and then through the traumatic 1990 presidential election campaign. For many Haughey loyalists the revelations in 1998 and 1999 that money collected for a fund for Lenihan's operation were diverted by Haughey for his personal use were particularly disturbing.
One wonders what these men and women would be feeling this week if they had the time to read the Moriarty tribunal report in full. If they were unnerved by the revelations in 1997 about the £1 million payment from Dunne, they would be stunned by the payments detailed in this report. The sheer scale of the money Haughey received, the range of big donors who gave it to him and the secretive methods used to hide it are shocking. Also shocking is the detail of how on at least three occasions he acted in the specific interest of these donors rather than in the public interest.
The extent to which Haughey stole Fianna Fáil party funds is also set out in detail. Many within the party's organisation around the country would quickly realise on reading this report that at the very time they were manning church gates, gathering pound notes and fivers for the party's national collection, or out soliciting money for what appeared to be a near incessant round of £10-a-ticket national party draws, Haughey was siphoning off hundreds of thousands of pounds from State funds meant for the party. In some of these years the Fianna Fáil party at headquarters level was often close to insolvency. It was this effort by party activists which kept it afloat while at the same time the party's leader was spending a lot of party coppers on lavish private comforts. They would be particularly appalled to read that although about £70,000 was spent on Lenihan's operation, Haughey used the pretext of Lenihan's illness to raise another €200,000 which he then also put to his own personal use.
Of course most Fianna Fáil activists won't read the full Moriarty report. Like the general population they will only get to read the extracts in the newspapers. Some will persuade themselves, even still, that the media is twisting things against Haughey. That's not the case this time, however. After years of evidence and investigation Mr Justice Moriarty has chronicled the facts in careful detail. The report is all the more damning because at times it is understated. The facts speak for themselves - Charles Haughey abused the office he held and the party he led. Anger is the correct response to these revelations, not denial.