AN ACCOUNT of the origins of social partnership written by Charles J Haughey will be among the papers of the late taoiseach which will be handed over to Dublin City University (DCU) at a ceremony in the college next Tuesday.
Also among the 250 boxes of papers covering the late taoiseach’s political life are details of the early contacts between Mr Haughey and the Belfast-based Redemptorist priest, Fr Alex Reid, in what later turned into the Northern peace process.
Minister of State at the Department of Education Seán Haughey said tentative discussions on where the papers should go had begun while his father was still alive. “While no final arrangements had been made at the time of his death the option of giving the papers to DCU was the favoured one and we proceeded with that,” said Mr Haughey.
The papers cover the late taoiseach’s political career from the beginning and contain internal Fianna Fáil material from cumann meetings to national executive meetings. Considerable personal material including correspondence with economists, artists and friends going back decades is also included. The papers going back to the 1940s and 1950s were boxed and identified by the family and remain largely undisturbed.
They include some handwritten notes about his attitude to politics, probably committed to paper as he battled illness in the later years of his life.
There are also details of the activities of his parents during the War of Independence in south Derry and his school days in Dublin.
The late taoiseach’s initiatives in the areas of arts, culture and heritage are documented and there is a large amount of correspondence covering 30 years, detailing how various artists and writers benefited from his 1969 income tax exemption scheme and the the establishment of Aosdána.
Seán Haughey, who is personally familiar with some of the material, said he believed that objective historians would acknowledge his father’s role in the building of modern Ireland.
The papers will be archived and catalogued by the library staff in DCU. Access will be restricted in line with the 30-year rule normally applied to state papers but historians and researchers will have full access in 2022, 30 years after Mr Haughey left public office.
The DCU Educational Trust has established an endowment fund to provide access scholarships to talented young people from the Northside Partnership Area as well as research fellowships in law and government in memory of Charles J Haughey.
