PERSONAL WOES:IF YOU had marriage problems or your son was facing a drink driving conviction, would you write to Taoiseach Brian Cowen for help? When Charles Haughey was taoiseach, he was inundated with such requests for assistance.
A Roscommon farmer was having problems with his wife of four years. He told Mr Haughey she hadn’t a penny when he married her, but she “has refused to have a child, cook, wash or clean the house. All she does is walk the roads and lie in bed all day. When I ask her what she intends doing, she tells me mind my own business, that she will do as she likes.”
She left the house for four months the previous year “dossing around with old bachelor men”. He tried to prevent her return home but she got into the house “in spite of me”.
“Could you please tell me is she entitled to equal share in my property, as I think she is entitled to none of it,” he asked Mr Haughey. The taoiseach’s secretary said only the man’s legal adviser could clarify his position in law.
A man from Bath wrote to Mr Haughey in May 1980, saying he was trying to get in touch with Johnny Logan, who had just won the Eurovision. He enclosed the lyrics of 12 songs he had written, and asked whether the taoiseach could forward them to the singer. He said he had read that one of Logan’s new agents was someone called Louis Walsh, “which does not really mean anything”.
Mr Haughey’s private secretary asked a colleague to ring RTÉ for the record company’s address, but said she shouldn’t say she was calling from the taoiseach’s office. “Say you’re a fan,” he instructed.
A 13-year-old boy from Limerick sought Mr Haughey’s help later that year. “Every Christmas we have a nice time with lots of things to eat etc. This year, however, we can’t have the usual nice things as there is a lot of expense hanging over us in the new year.” He explained he had been caught driving his father’s tractor, and the family had received three summonses. He wondered whether Mr Haughey could write to the judge “and ask him not to fine us too heavy, or we may not have enough to eat in 1981”. The taoiseach’s office explained that he could not interfere in the matter.
The file contains many letters from people with money issues. Mr Haughey’s private secretary told one woman seeking help with her debts that the taoiseach had no funds to help. “He receives so many requests like yours that he has been forced to limit his personal charity to people he knows personally,” the secretary wrote.
A Dublin mother told Mr Haughey she was at her “wits’ end” over a court appearance for her son who had been caught drink-driving. “I am begging you now,” she wrote. “Only you next to God would I have the cheek to ask.”She said her 22-year-old son “had a broken love affair and he was in bits over it. The girl he thought he was to marry was already engaged and did not tell him until after Xmas.”
Mr Haughey said he could not intervene, but encouraged her to ensure her son’s case was put as fully and strongly as possible.
Dublin playwright Heno Magee asked the taoiseach for help after his fourth rejection for a bursary from the Arts Council. Mr Magee said he had received less than £4,000 in royalties from his work over a 12-year period, despite his plays being staged at the Abbey and featuring on RTÉ. Among his plays are Hatchet, Red Biddy and I’m Getting Out of This Kip.
“My creative endeavours are being frustrated, and stifled, by circumstances over which I have no control.” He said his needs were urgent “and it seems I may be forced to emigrate to England where hopefully I may be allowed to continue with my writing or, at least, find employment”.
Mr Haughey commiserated with him, but said he had no power to direct the Arts Council on how to allocate bursaries.
