I saw him as a decent man who only ever wanted to do good. What surprised me most about Charlie was that he genuinely did not believe that he was intelligent. Rather he saw himself as a catalyst, as somebody who could respond to the concepts, initiatives or thinking of others. Once you had his respect, Haughey listened carefully.
He liked to take quiet counsel with a range of opinion, not always the intelligentsia, the rich or the influential. They were frequently ordinary people that he knew — gardai, school friends, clergymen, constituency workers. Charlie had a particular regard for ordinary people who worked hard all their lives. He saw them as his natural political constituency.
If Charlie had a list of unrealised ambitions or goals it would be very short. Any regrets that I know of were quite personal. He would have liked musical or artistic talent, and admired it in others. He told me he had a complete blank spot on music that he could not overcome. He also had a hankering for golf, but never took it up.
He enjoyed an amazing library of books on all kinds of subjects. On occasion, Charlie would argue a particular point in history, about the natural world, or over some great event, and then take a book from his library to show he was right.
One of my favourite memories of him is a long lunch in a restaurant in Paris one cold day in November. The head waiter knew who he was and fawned over him, as did the wine waiter. They seemed to be annoying us every five minutes and kept referring to him as Mr Hockey. At about 4.45pm Charlie told the head waiter: “It’s Haughey.” The waiter came back a few minutes later to say he had turned down the heating.
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His own favourite anecdote concerned an EU summit at which Margaret Thatcher accused Giulio Andreotti, the Italian prime minister, of changing economic statistics so that Italy qualified for regional aid despite new rules. Andreotti explained that no, he hadn’t changed the statistics, but he had changed the statisticians.
His achievements cannot be taken from him, particularly the small things that mean so much to so many. Even this year he was still receiving thank-you cards for giving free travel to the over 65s.
Charlie was a good guy. I will greatly miss him. So will all those lucky enough to have known him as a friend.
Des Peelo is a former partner with Haughey Boland & Co