FROM THE ARCHIVES:Charles Haughey's style of government worried many people, especially in his first and second administrations in the early 1980s. Some of its characteristics were noted in this report by Political Correspondent Dick Walsh in 1982 when Haughey broke EU ranks over the British military response to Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. – JOE JOYCE
LEADING MEMBERS of Fine Gael and Labour claim that more and more senior civil servants are becoming worried by the way in which the Taoiseach, Mr Haughey, takes decisions.
The Fine Gael leader, Dr Garret FitzGerald, and the former leader of the Labour Party, Mr Frank Cluskey, have suggested in the Dáil that the Government’s policy on the Falklands conflict was devised without consultation with the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Neither they nor anyone else in the major Opposition parties would elaborate on the suggestion, which Mr Haughey has strongly denied, but several former Cabinet ministers and some members of Fianna Fáil say privately, that this was only one worrying example of the Taoiseach’s style.
They argue that the Department of Foreign Affairs was surprised by, and unprepared for, Mr Haughey’s decision to request an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council on May 4th to discuss the Falklands conflict.
Dr FitzGerald, Mr Barry Desmond of Labour and Mr Austin Deasy of Fine Gael have made the point – again strenuously denied by Mr Haughey – that the decision was hastily taken, in response to anti-British feeling in Fianna Fáil, apparently without the knowledge of the efforts being made by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Perez de Cuellar, to resolve the crisis.
But, according to Mr Haughey’s critics, the Falklands affair is only one example of the Taoiseach’s unorthodox approach to Foreign Affairs. His speech at the White House on St Patrick’s Day and the press conference at which he later spoke of Northern policy were others.
The White House speech, in which the Taoiseach touched on British withdrawal from the North but refrained from urging Irish-Americans to refuse aid to the Provisional IRA, is interpreted as a nod in the direction of Mr Neil Blaney of Independent Fianna Fáil.
Foreign Affairs, however, is not the only Department where officials have been made uneasy by Mr Haughey’s decisions: Deals done during the general election campaigns in 1981 and 1982 are also a source of concern.
In 1981, the Taoiseach – as Taoiseach – produced what was described by a former Minister as one of the most extraordinary and extensive agreements of recent years to save the Talbot car-assembly plant in his own constituency.
The Government’s commitment was to bridge the gap between what Talbot’s 90 or so workers were demanding as a wage increase and what the company said it could afford.
At least three former Ministers say that senior civil servants were so concerned about the unorthodoxy of the deal they would have nothing to do with it. The subsequent Fine Gael-Labour Coalition had its Attorney General, Mr Peter Sutherland, check its legal validity. He discovered that not only was it binding, it was not limited to one year.
This year, according to the 1982 estimate, the Talbot deal will cost the Exchequer about £475,000. And a precedent may also have been set relieving managements in the car-assembly business of responsibility for providing similar industrial employment for workers in the event of their companies closing.
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