Free Republic

De mortuis nil nisi bonum was one of the few Latin phrases my father had, and in the main I stick by it. I could barely bring myself to watch the television coverage of the funeral on Friday of Charles Haughey, the former Taoiseach of my country, liar, fraud, cheat and, to coin a phrase once used in another context by another politician of a colleague, "a thundering disgrace". Mr Haughey was accorded a state funeral. A state funeral! The honour you give to those who have served, rather than used, their country. This is the honour you accord to...

Dozens of mourners queued today to pay their respects to former Taoiseach Charles Haughey within minutes of a book of condolence being opened in the heart of his old constituency. Outside. Workers scrambled to repaint railings and touch up the flagpole where the Tricolour flew at half-mast at Our Lady of Consolation Church in Donnycarney, north Dublin. This is where the one-time TD for the area will lie in state before being buried on Friday. Joe Mirolo, 73, from nearby Clontarf was a classmate of Mr Haughey’s at St Joseph’s in Fairview. “We used to meet every year at the...

Two members of Sinn Fein were being questioned tonight as part of a police investigation into possible IRA links to a major money laundering operation. They were among six men and a woman detained in Dublin and Co Cork. More than £2 million was seized but late tonight police in Belfast could not confirm that any of the money was part of the £26.5 million stolen from the Northern Bank just before Christmas. The Sinn Fein leadership said they were not prepared to make any comment on the cross-border inquiry but politicians from all the main parties in Belfast and...

MALCOLM Macarthur was known to his friends as a quiet academic with a raffish dress sense. He was widely understood to have immense wealth. The man with post-graduate degrees from both Trinity College and Cambridge University had never worked a day since his birth to a well-off family with a substantial farm near Trim, Co Meath. His childhood was both violent and unhappy and his parents separated when he was in his mid -teens. His father was reported to be a brutish penny-pincher, who had constant rows with his wife and later his son. Macarthur's mother Irene described one incident...