My grandfather and godfather - Patsy McGarry too - was a founder member of the local Fianna Fáil cumann in north Roscommon, 80 years ago or thereabouts. Patsy McGarryreflects on the sort of people who created Fianna Fáil . . . and were betrayed by Charles Haughey and his kind
He had no more than primary school education and tried to squeeze a living from 14 acres of mean-spirited, boggy land for himself and his family of four. He believed in Fianna Fáil because of what it stood for and not for what it might do for him. And it did little for him.
My mother's family, Rogers's from Castleplunkett in Roscommon too, were strong Fianna Fáil supporters. There was, for instance, my grand-uncle Jim Rogers. He fought, was tortured and jailed in the War of Independence, and was on the losing side in the civil war.
So he emigrated to the US.
There was no future in the new Cumann na nGaedheal Free State for "irregular" drapers' assistants. He went to America in 1923 and, though he lived until 1992, he returned to Ireland just once in the intervening 69 years and that was in the 1930s to show off his new wife to the family.
I met him in New York where I spent two summers when a student. Like many of his generation and allegiance he was driven by a deep conviction that those who had accepted the Treaty were morally inferior.
They had sworn allegiance to the king of their oppressors; they had abandoned the aim of freeing all their country; they had used British guns and arms to kill their former comrades; and they had done all this to get their hands on jobs created in the new State's public service. They were craven, weak, cowardly. There was no talking to uncle Jim!
Then there was my late father, Tom McGarry, who was a Fianna Fáil county councillor in Roscommon. He fell out with the party in 1981 when he didn't get a Dáil nomination for the general election that year. He was a good friend and dedicated supporter of Brian Lenihan's, who was TD in the county until 1973, when he lost his seat there.
I can say hand-on-heart that my father worshipped de Valera. Dev was and remained supreme, above and beyond all criticism where he was concerned and woe betide anyone who would question that supremacy.
I know: I was that boy.
You could say then that my Fianna Fáil pedigree cannot be challenged. But the Fianna Fáil passed on to my generation had changed from that inherited by my father. It was run by children of the revolution and was already growing fat, arrogant, newly wealthy and peculiarly unsure of itself. The insecurity was not surprising, despite its years in power.
Its protectionist policies had failed to provide enough jobs for the people. Its Irish language policy was merely token. It ignored the North of Ireland and the repressive subjugation of Irish nationalists there.
It had lost its raison d'etre.
It was concerned only with power and holding on to power and began to seek out the talent that could help it continue to do so, rather than men and women of political conviction. It drew into "the family" those who harboured ambitions to become powerful and wealthy.
Such were welcomed for their acumen and ability to be elected. They followed the party line, politically, and did not have to bother themselves too much about having any real convictions of their own. They were hollow men (mostly) and women. It soon began to seem that though Fianna Fáil still had two aims - and particularly as the Northern troubles escalated - these were no longer the achievement of a united Ireland and the revival of the Irish language.
No, they now appeared to be about securing power and money.
One to ensure the other.
Probably no single figure in the party epitomised that more than Charles J Haughey - a man of tremendous ability and little principle. It is said that when he arrived in the Dáil as a young TD, some of the old guard in Fianna Fáil were immediately aware of the danger he posed.
The late Seán MacEntee is said to have forecast that Haughey's ambition would destroy the party. It didn't, but it helped change it for the worse, and Irish politics would be greatly diminished by the culture allowed by Haughey and those he surrounded himself with.
All the report from the Moriarty tribunal did was confirm the detail of what has long been believed - that low standards prevailed at the highest levels in Irish politics and for more years than we care to acknowledge.
The emperor has been exposed; the Haughey myth shattered.
And what a myth? That such was his genius he could live in a magnificent Gandon mansion, own an island and a yacht, and live an ostentatiously extravagant lifestyle, even as his only known means of support was a politician's salary.
For most of the relevant years ordinary Fianna Fáil supporters believed Haughey could afford this lifestyle because of astute and clever investments and that, given the opportunity, he would do the same for the country.
This became the, so-called, fat chieftain theory. It was all a sham. He was a sham. More Wizard of Oz than fat chieftain.
All such a long way from those dedicated men and women of the soil, like my grandfather, whose only inspiration was patriotism.
Even Haughey's avowed republicanism seems doubtful. More than a few were astonished at his being implicated in the Arms Trial, because not many had been aware beforehand that he had any interest at all in the North, despite his family background.
More grist to the myth.
Those in Fianna Fáil who suspected the truth were powerless against that myth. Nevertheless they tried to stop him and so the party was convulsed for the best part of three decades - from 1966, when Haughey first ran for leadership.
But the cost is greater than to the party, as Justice Moriarty has said. The culture Haughey and his cohorts allowed at local and national level has been deeply corrosive and is still being addressed by various tribunals. Slowly, slowly, we hope, it is being eradicated. But at a cost.
The cynicism of the people where public life in Ireland is concerned has probably never been greater since the corrupt shenanigans that led to the Act of Union in 1800, when the people had little say anyhow.
And politics has become so regulated that it is off-putting where the able, the talented, and those with principle are concerned.
But what else can be done!
It has also meant that those of us who inherited a pride in our political pedigree have been robbed of that as well as being alienated from a possibly predestined role in the political life of this State by carpetbaggers and cuckoos.
Of course this cynical abuse of public position was not peculiar to Fianna Fáil - as we expect to see addressed in the next Moriarty report - though evidence to date does suggest it was more prevalent in that party, probably because it was more successful.
As recent polls indicate few seemingly believe such cynical abuse is a feature at leadership/ministerial levels in that party now.
But Fianna Fáil's recent past has been so damaging to the Irish body politic, and as observed by Justice Moriarty, that full confidence in the party and the body politic will take a very, very long time to restore. Many of us will be old before that happens.