Charlie Haughey's Finances: The Kaiser and the Boss

A special investigation by Magill into the finances of the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, reveals:

A special investigation by Magill into the finances of the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, reveals:

In 1968 Mr Haughey, then Minister for Finance, purchased a 130 acre stud farm in Ratoath, Co Meath, without recourse to borrowings. The Revenue Commissioners have recently requested all official documents related to this transaction and are enquiring how Mr Haughey was able to afford this purchase at a time when his only known income was derived from his official offices as a TD and Minister. (The Moriarty Tribunal is precluded from enquiring into this transaction.)

As Minister for Finance, Mr Haughey introduced special tax exemption for stud farms and the horse industry generally. As the owner of the Ratoath stud farm from 1968 he appears to have benefited personally from the measure that he himself introduced as Minister for Finance. (The Moriarty Tribunal is precluded from enquiring into this issue.)

Dermot Desmond made substantial payments to Mr Charles Haughey personally, including one six-figure donation since Mr Haughey ceased to be Taoiseach.

Dermot Desmond sought donations for the Fianna Fail party while Mr Haughey was leader of that party.

Dermot Desmond's stockbroking firm received a large number of state contracts during the period that Mr Haughey was Taoiseach from 1987 to 1992, although, it must be acknowledged, that much if not all of this work was obtained on merit.

There is evidence which contradicts the assurance given by the Greencore chairman, Bernie Cahill, that NCB was appointed stockbrokers to Greencore by the time that a meeting took place between Mr Haughey and Mr Cahill in May 1990. Mr Cahill himself told a Greencore EGM in October 1991 that at the time of the May 1990 meeting with Mr Haughey he (Mr Cahill) had shown the then Taoiseach a list of possible stockbrokers, who might later be asked to act for the company. NCB itself has stated that they were appointed stockbrokers in August 1990, some two months after the Haughey-Cahill meeting. Magill is not asserting that Mr Cahill acted improperly, only that perhaps his recollection may have been mistaken.

The person who stored the secret Ansbacher files on the death of Mr Desmond Traynor, Sam Field-Corbett, has a stake in Celtic Helicopters, the company part owned by Mr Haughey's son, Ciaran Haughey.

Roadstone Ltd, one of the companies that in 1970 came to form Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH), had previously owned thirty acres of the lands that Mr Haughey bought at Kinsealy in 1968. Seven years after he made the purchase (in 1975), Mr Haughey sold back some lands to Cement Roadstone Holdings Ltd for a price that exceeded the entire cost of both the lands at Kinsealy and the lavish house, Abbeville. Mr Desmond Traynor, Mr Haughey's financial adviser, was a director of CRH at the time.

An official deliberately withheld many of the files relating to Mr Haughey's land transactions over the years from public inspection in one of the offices concerned.

 

 

Dermot Desmond played a central role in raising money for Charles Haughey and for Fianna Fáil while Mr Haughey was its leader. Mr Desmond has also made payments to Mr Haughey since the former Taoiseach retired, in February 1992.

 

Mr Desmond made a number of substantial payments to Mr Haughey, including one six-figure payment. This latter payment was made since February 1992, to help defray Mr Haughey's living and household expenses, according to a reliable source.  It is expected that this evidence will be made available to the Moriarty tribunal's inquiry into payments to Mr Haughey. Mr Desmond is likely to be called as a witness.

Mr Desmond also personally solicited funds from wealthy businessmen on behalf of Fianna Fáil during the late 1980s, according to a business source who was approached for funds on behalf of Fianna Fáil by Mr Desmond.

Both Mr Haughey and Mr Desmond declined to respond to questions from Magill about these issues. A spokesman for Fianna Fáil also declined to comment and said fund-raising was a private matter for the party.  There would have been nothing improper about Mr Desmond's seeking funds on behalf of Fianna Fáil or about his giving money to Mr Haughey. There may have been tax implications in relation to donations by Mr Desmond to Mr Haughey, and it is not clear if these have been attended to.

During the early 1990s, the relationship between Charles Haughey and Dermot Desmond became the subject of much media scrutiny, following allegations of political favouritism by opposition Dáil deputies and business rivals of Desmond's stockbroking company, National City Brokers (NCB).

At the time, both men denied the allegations, and Charles Haughey  publicly sought to distance himself from Mr Desmond.

Following evidence given at the Dunnes tribunal about the cost of Mr Haughey's lifestyle, it became clear that Ben Dunne's payments, amounting to £1.3 million, would not have been sufficient to maintain Mr Haughey's standard of living for the last 20 years.

Paul Carty, formerly of Haughey Boland and now managing partner of the accountancy firm Deloitte & Touche, told the Dunnes tribunal that he paid a total of £708,850 on behalf of Mr Haughey between August 1, 1988, and January 31, 1991.  This amounted to £283,200 per annum (£23,600 per month, £5,446 per week).

Thus, Mr Dunne's payment of £1.3 million would have financed only four years and seven months of Mr Haughey's lifestyle. It seemed clear that Mr Haughey would have had to obtain funds from sources other than Ben Dunne to meet his expenses.

The McCracken tribunal found no evidence of any favours given by Charles Haughey to Ben Dunne and described Dunne as an “impetuously generous person” who was simply trying to buy the “friendship or at least the acquaintance of a person in a powerful political position.”

One of the points of focus for the Moriarty tribunal will be to determine where the additional funds to finance Mr Haughey's lifestyle since 1979 came from. The current terms of reference of the Moriarty tribunal involve an investigation into Mr Haughey's finances dating back only to the year in which he became Taoiseach for the first time.

Mr Haughey and Mr Desmond first met in 1986, and on Mr Haughey's return to office in March 1987 Mr Desmond's stockbroking firm, NCB, won a number of significant state contracts.

From 1987 to 1992, NCB received ten major semi-state contracts from eight separate bodies, while its four major stockbroking rivals between them received a total of just nine contracts. Mr Desmond was also appointed chairman of Aer Rianta.

NCB's first major state assignment was the sale of the government's stake in Tara Mines in 1989, for which it was paid a commission of £530,000 – claimed at the time to be three times the going rate. A government minister explained it as a ‘performance bonus.'

Some of the other state contracts obtained by NCB included the privatisations of  Irish Life and the Irish Sugar company in 1991, as well as consultancy work for An Bord Gáis,  CIÉ and Telecom Éireann.

By 1991, after only six years in the business, NCB was the country's second-largest stockbroker, accounting for about a quarter of all Irish broking business.  It was a phenomenal rise in such a short time. Mr Desmond's renowned energy and ability were undoubtedly the major contributors to that success, as was the talented team he gathered into NCB. The work obtained from the state played a part in this success as well. There were allegations made in the Dáil by opposition TDs that favouritism was being shown to NCB.

In October 1987, representations were made indirectly by the late Desmond Traynor, who managed Mr Haughey's financial affairs, to Ben Dunne, stating that a number of business people were being approached to assist Mr Haughey out of financial difficulties. No evidence has emerged that any other business people were then approached or, if so, who these people were. However, it would be surprising if Mr Desmond was not then consulted about Mr Haughey's financial position, although Magill has no evidence to that effect.

Desmond and Controversy

Dermot Desmond and NCB became embroiled in two controversies in 1991, those involving Greencore (Irish Sugar Company)  and Telecom Éireann.
In the Greencore affair, Labour leader Dick Spring alleged that Mr Haughey told Greencore chairman Bernie Cahill to appoint NCB as advisors on its privatisation.  Mr Spring alleged this happened on 26 May 1990 at a meeting between Mr Haughey and Mr Cahill in Mr Haughey's home at Kinsealy.  Mr Cahill was also chairman of  Feltrim Mining,  a company set up by Mr Haughey's son Conor.

At the time, a source within the Irish Sugar Company insisted that, following his meeting with Mr Haughey in May 1990,  Mr Cahill phoned the former Greencore chief executive Chris Comerford and told him that Haughey wanted NCB and solicitor Pat O'Connor,  an old friend of Mr Haughey, to handle Greencore's proposed privatisation.

Both Mr Haughey and Mr Cahill rejected this allegation. At first, Mr Haughey denied a meeting had ever taken place. Later, he acknowledged that a meeting had indeed taken place, but he said that at no stage did he suggest the appointment of advisors to the company.

Mr Cahill told an extraordinary general meeting of Greencore shareholders in October 1991 that he had shown a list of companies from which a stockbrokerwould be chosen to Mr Haughey at the May 1990 meeting, but that no “undue pressure” was put on him to support the appointment of NCB.

Later, a government inquiry into the affair found no impropriety in the appointment of advisors. However, some confusion about what happened remains.
In his evidence to the Greencore inquiry, Mr Cahill said that Mr Haughey could not have influenced the company's appointment of a stockbroker at their meeting in May 1990 because the appointment had already been made.  However, this appears to contradict what Mr Cahill told the EGM in October 1991 – that he showed a list of prospective advisors (which included NCB) to Haughey at the May 1990 meeting.  In addition, NCB wrote to the inquiry and confirmed that the date of their appointment was 16 August 1990, two months after the Kinsealy meeting in May 1990.  Mr Cahill told Magill that he still stands by his evidence to the inquiry.

On 31 October 1991, Mr Haughey told the Dáil: “I see all this as nothing more than part of the concentrated campaign of personal attacks on my integrity which have been carried out now over a considerable time. Meetings that I held and actions that I took in the normal performance of my duties as head of government are now being retrospectively attacked as suspicious or improper without the slightest justification... The approach seems to be that I should sit in my house in splendid isolation, meeting no one, hearing nothing, discussing nothing.”

The Telecom affair later that year (1991) involved the sale of the old Johnson Mooney & O'Brien site in Ballsbridge to Telecom Éireann for £9.4 million, more than double the price for which it had been bought a year earlier. John Glackin, the inspector appointed by the government to investigate the matter, found that Mr Desmond was the main beneficiary of the series of complex transactions that led to the sale involving public money.

Mr Desmond also became involved in a controversy concerning Celtic Helicopters, owned in part by Mr Haughey's son, Ciaran Haughey. A confidential report carried out by Mr Desmond's stockbroking firm, NCB, for a rival company, Irish Helicopters, a subsidiary of Aer Lingus, was inadvertently supplied to Ciaran Haughey.

NCB said that Mr Desmond had no personal involvement in this mistake, and Aer Lingus accepted this. However, John Bruton of Fine Gael raised the issue in the Dáil and demanded to know if the Taoiseach “had any hand in inducing Mr Desmond of NCB to attempt to pass on this information to his son's company.” Mr Haughey emphatically denied that he had played any such part.

WHAT SORT OF FRIENDSHIP?

Following the Greencore and Telecom controversies, the nature of the relationship between  Charles Haughey and Dermot Desmond became the subject of media scrutiny. There were allegations of favouritism and of the existence of  a “golden circle” whereby some favoured businesspeople were able to use their friendship with politicians to their commercial advantage.

Concerning his alleged relationship with Mr Desmond, Mr Haughey gave at times conflicting accounts.

According to newspaper accounts in 1991, when Desmond was forced to “step aside” as chairman of Aer Rianta (at the height of the controversy over the sale of the Telecom site at Ballsbridge), Mr Haughey appeared to distance himself from Mr Desmond. He was quoted on one occasion as saying that it was “a personal friendship, nothing more than that,” and on another occasion as “not a personal social friendship, but rather a business social friendship.”

In October 1991, Vincent Brady, the then government chief whip, said that Mr Haughey had told the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party that Dermot Desmond was a “business friend” and not a “personal friend.”

The Irish Press reported: “A spokesman for the Taoiseach  later denied that Mr Haughey had ever had any business dealings with Mr Desmond. He said Mr Haughey told the [Parliamentary party] meeting that Mr Desmond was simply one of many business people he [Mr Haughey] met in the course of his normal government duties to discuss industrial, employment and other matters. The spokesman said Mr Haughey had not said Mr Desmond was a ‘business friend' or implied that he did personal business deals with him.”

This response occasioned the Labour leader, Dick Spring, to inquire:  “How many more of his friends [will] the Taoiseach offer up in order to protect his own position?” He claimed that “cronyism” and “favouritism” had “stained Mr Haughey's time in office.”

Pat Rabbitte, then of the Workers Party, asked Mr Haughey to state exactly  the nature of his business relationship with Mr Desmond and to say unequivocally whether Mr Desmond had ever directly or indirectly acted for him in commercial dealings since he became Taoiseach.

 

In 1968 Charles Haughey was Minister for Finance. His only known source of income was £6,000 per annum, the income he derived as a TD and as Minister. Yet in that year he purchased the 130-acre Rath Stud farm in Ratoath, Co Meath, for a price that, in today's terms, must have been well over half a million pounds. It appears he was able to finance the purchase of this stud farm without recourse to borrowings, for no mortgage was registered on the property at the time.

Magill has learnt that the Revenue Commissioners, in their investigation into the finances and tax liabilities of Mr Haughey, are paying particular attention to this purchase, although it will be outside the terms of reference of the Moriarty Tribunal. (The Tribunal's terms of reference involve an inquiry into Mr Haughey's finances only back to the year in which he became Taoiseach – 1979.) The Revenue Commissioners requested all documents relating to the transaction involving Rath Stud.

Incidentally, as Minister for Finance, Mr Haughey introduced a provision in the Finance Act which allowed tax free status for the horse industry, including the operation of stud farms. That change in the Finance Act would have increased the value of the Rath Stud considerably. However this dimension to the transaction is outside the scope of the enquiry of the Revenue Commissioners, as well as being outside the scope of the Moriarty Tribunal.

The purchase of the Ratoath property predates the purchase of Mr Haughey's home, Abbeville in Kinsealy. Mr Haughey used the stud farm in subsequent years as part collateral to raise loans of more than half a million pounds.

The purchase of Abbeville, the following year (1969) for a reputed £120,000,  is more easily explained. In the same year Mr Haughey received £204,000 from the Gallagher Group for the sale of Grangemore, a Victorian mansion on 45 acres north of Coolock, where Haughey and his family lived since 1960 (up to that time he and his family had lived in a modest semi-detached house in Raheny). Mr Haughey paid just £10,000 for the Grangemore property ten years earlier. The value of Grangemore rocketed after the lands surrounding it were rezoned for housing development. 

The mystery of Mr Haughey's wealth has been compounded by the fact that files relating to the various lands owned by  him and kept at the Land Registry have not always being available for public inspection. Aside from computerised records which give sparse details, Magill has learnt that many of the original files, deliberately, were kept out of circulation for years and some are still not available even today. Some facts, however, have emerged and fill in part of the jig-saw.

Mr Haughey bought Rath Stud in his own name in 1968, whereas the Kinsealy estate was acquired through a company called Abbeyville Ltd. Mr Haughey's friend and solicitor Pat O'Connor set up the company in October 1968. Its registered address was 61 Amiens Street - the same address as the Haughey Boland accountancy firm, which Mr Haughey started in the 1950's with his school friend, Harry Boland.

Almost 30 acres of the Kinsealy Estate once belonged to Roadstone Ltd - one of the precursors of the Cement Roadstone Holding (CRH) company which came into being following the merger of Irish Cement and Roadstone Ltd in 1970. Mr Haughey's father-in-law, the former Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, was the company's first chairman and Mr Haughey's accountant, Des Traynor, was one of CRH's first directors and a later chairman. 

According to one of the folios relating to Abbeville, Roadstone Ltd owned 30 acres of the Kinsealy Estate from 1964 until October 1968 when it sold the property to a company called Farm Equipment (Eire) Limited, which sold it on to Abbeyville Ltd four months later.

According to a reliable source, in 1975 Haughey sold a number of acres back to Cement Roadstone for more than £120,000 - the original price he paid for the entire Kinsealy estate in 1969.

In 1975 Fianna Fáil was in opposition, having lost power two years earlier, but Mr Haughey was restored to the party's front bench.  He had been dismissed from government in May 1970 at the time of the Arms Crisis.

The Grangemore sale in 1969 sparked much controversy when details were leaked during the General Election of the same year. Fine Gael's Finance spokesman, the late Gerard Sweetman, alleged Mr Haughey had benefited on the sale from a capital gains tax concession that he (Haughey) had introduced himself in a previous budget, as Minister for Finance. 

According to an Irish Times report, Mr Haughey insisted that there was “nothing underhand” about the whole business. He also issued a “categorical denial” that he had used his position as Minister for his own benefit. Mr Haughey referred the matter to the Revenue Commissioners and they later issued a short report, supporting his position.

However, Mr Sweetman wouldn't let the matter rest. He took the case to an independent tax counsel and it was his opinion that Mr Haughey would have been exposed to the payment of tax had not the 1968 Act been enacted. The matter was never fully resolved but it was the first time that Mr Haughey's wealth and business practices were ever openly questioned in public.

In the 1969 general election Conor Cruise O'Brien who was standing for the Dáil for the first time, and in the constituency where Mr Haughey held a seat (Dublin North East), also raised questions about the Grangemore transaction.

In May 1969, Haughey's company Abbeyville Ltd bought another 23 acres at Rath Stud. A year later Haughey used Rath Stud and Abbeville as collateral to raise a £200,000 loan from the Munster & Leinster Bank.

His next big expenditure occurred in 1975 when Mr Haughey was ostensibly earning a salary of £4,661 (he was just a TD at the time). Using a company called Larchfield Securities Ltd, Haughey bought the island of Inishvickillaun, off the coast of Kerry. While it reputedly cost him only  £20,000,  hundreds of thousands pounds more were spent on the building of a luxury holiday home on the island, containing solar panels, its own telephone line and windmill for electricity generation.

In the same year (1975) the Munster & Leinster £200,000 loan was cancelled. Also in 1975, the Rath Stud and Abbeville were used for yet more borrowings - this time £247,000 from the Northern Bank Finance Corporation and £179,000 from AIB. 

At this time, Abbeyville Ltd was liquidated (voluntary) and the legal ownership of Kinsealy estate was transferred to the names of Charles and Maureen Haughey. The liquidator of Abbeyville Ltd, was Jack Stakelum, a former colleague of Mr Haughey, from Haughey Boland, and the person who managed Mr Haughey's household expenses between January 1991 and December 1996.

In 1976, the AIB loan was extended - initially to £190,000 and again in 1977 to cover advances up to £350,000. There were two small acquisitions made in 1977: three acres in Wexford (via Larchfield Securities) for an unknown sum and an additional eight acres to Abbeville for £22,500. Later in the year, Haughey sold Rath Stud for an estimated £300,000.

The following year (1977, when he returned to government as Minister for Health) he bought a trawler for £35,000 and had it re-fitted for family use for a further £15,000. 

By the mid 1970s Charles Haughey had become a very wealthy man. By any standard, it was an extraordinary transformation for one who had come from a poor social background and started out as a public representative living in a modest semi-detached home in Raheny. 

There was never a doubt about Mr Haughey's ambition to become rich. The late journalist John Healy, a confidant and admirer of Mr Haughey, wrote in 1986 how, as a young accountant, Haughey set himself the goal of making £100,000 before the age of 30. “It was like a twenty-year-old today promising to make a million by the turn of the century,” he wrote.

Certainly by the time Mr Haughey was 50 (1976) he was enjoying a very lavish lifestyle. His estate in Kinsealy was home to pheasants and racehorses. In 1979 The Irish Times reported there were as many as thirty racehorses, including 10 brood mares.  The 12 bedroomed Gandon mansion,  including the 16 foot high ballroom, was completely refurbished and housed a valuable collection of Irish art and antiques. The wine cellar was reportedly stocked with prestigious wines and Mr Haughey even had his own Irish pub. Known as “the snug” - this was a small room fitted out with the furnishings of an old Dublin City pub and designed by Sam Stephenson. Outside, there was a swimming pool, a large fountain, a helicopter hanger, a lake, a small farm and woodlands containing a rich variety of precious trees.

Evidence given at the McCracken Tribunal suggested that the upkeep of the property and household was almost £300,000 a year between 1988 and 1991.
No evidence is available about Mr Haughey's finances until he returned to government in 1987 as Taosieach. Within a few months of taking office he was represented by his close financial adviser, Desmond Traynor, as being in severe financial difficulties. Arising out of those difficulties £1.3m was obtained from Ben Dunne. It was that gift which has led to the unravelling of one of the great  mysteries of modern Irish politics: how Charles Haughey became a hugely wealthy man at a time when he held public office.

 

 

The man who stored the secret Ansbacher files in Dublin following the death of Desmond Traynor in 1994  has a stake in Ciaran Haughey's helicopter company, and is a long time business associate of Charles Haughey. 

 

Sam Field-Corbett was a director of one of Mr Haughey's private companies, Larchfield Securities Ltd.  He and Charles Haughey both worked as accountants in Haughey Boland. In 1973,  Field-Corbett set up Management and Investment Services  Ltd - a company that has played a major role in the funding ofCeltic Helicopters.

An examination of the abridged accounts for Celtic Helicopters  reveals sparse information about the investors or creditors of the company.  Apart from the company's two directors, Ciaran Haughey and John Barnicle, who are also shareholders, the remaining four shareholders are listed as MS Nominees Ltd with an address at 8 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8.

This is the same address as Field-Corbett's Management and Investment Services Ltd. A company search on MS Nominees shows that Field-Corbett is a director, holding one share and another company MIS Nominees, of the same address, holds the remaining 59.  When contacted by Magill, Mr Field-Corbett refused to identify the individuals behind MS Nominees Ltd.

During the McCracken Tribunal, Padraig Colleary, the former Guinness & Mahon bank official who kept the computer records of the Ansbacher accounts, told how he facilitated Mr John Furze - the Cayman Island banker –  in the locating and storage of the Ansbacher files, following Des Traynor's death. He said the files were kept in the Dublin offices of his friend, Sam Field-Corbett, until Mr Furze's return.

Paul Carty, the managing director of Deloitte and Touche, and the man who paid Charles Haughey's bills between August 1988 and January 1991, was also a director of Celtic Helicopters for seven years - between 1985 and 1992. 

Mr Ciaran Haughey told the McCracken Tribunal that he did not know that monies from the Ansbacher deposits were used to pay off a £150,000 loan to his company and were used to secure a number of other loans for the company.  When presented with evidence by the tribunal team that the £150,000 was paid back from the general account in the Ansbacher deposits associated with Charles Haughey - the memorandum account described as ‘S8' and used to pay Mr Haughey's living expenses - Ciaran Haughey said he knew  nothing about it and that he only  became aware of these accounts through the tribunal.
However, Mr Justice McCracken did not accept Ciaran Haughey's evidence.  In his report, Mr Justice McCracken said that whatever about not knowing that some company loans  were secured by the Ansbacher money,  he could not accept Ciaran Haughey's evidence that he knew nothing about the way the £150,000 loan was repaid.

"Greed is the greatest motivator"

 

Dermot Desmond (right) is one of the country's most remarkable and respected businessmen. Although near to financial collapse in 1991 at the height of the Telecom site crisis, he has since amassed a massive fortune with interests in London City Airport, a highly successful computer company based in the International Financial services Centre in Dublin, shareholdings in Golden Vale, a 50 per cent stake in an aircraft leasing company, and a share in Glasgow Celtic.

Dublin born and without a third level education, he worked as an adviser to the World Bank in Afghanistan until 1980. He then returned to Ireland and in 1981 he launched National City Brokers (NCB), first as a money broking firm and later as a stockbroking operation. His impact on the Dublin stockbroking scene was enormous.

He assembled a talented team of professionals and within a decade NCB had become the second largest stockbroking firm in the country, largely due to his drive and talent.

It was PJ Mara, the former Government Press Officer, who first introduced Desmond to Charles Haughey in 1986 – the first meeting took place by accident in New York. Desmond persuaded Mr Haughey on the merits of establishing an international financial services centre (IFSC) in Dublin and this became part of the Fianna Fáil 1987 election manifesto. Mr Desmond was awarded with an option on a site in the new IFSC and bought the South Block part of the centre.

Later, this proved hugely problematic when he was unable to rent the space at an economic rate. He has since sold a number of floors in the block.

Between 1987 and 1992, when Mr Haughey was Taoiseach, Mr Desmond's stockbroking firm, NCB, won a large number of lucrative state jobs, and Desmond became embroiled in a number of political controversies - most notably  the Telecom affair. Shortly afterwards, he was forced to ‘stand aside' as chairman of Aer Rianta and he resigned from his position in NCB.  In 1995, he sold his 40% share in the company to Ulster Bank for a reported £12m.

Mr Desmond is now no longer involved in stockbroking. He operates an investment company, International Investments Underwriting  Ltd (IIU). Through it he holds a variety of  shareholdings in companies such as Golden Vale, a hotels company, the Glasgow football club and two computer companies. One of these, he sold at a reported massive profit and the other, Baltimore Technologies, has recently done a hugely lucrative deal with a US based internet service provider.  He is closely associated with the bloodstock owner John Magnier, with whom he recently made a bid for a hotel in Barbados. He is also associated with the bookmaker JP McManus. Eileen Gleeson, the PR consultant and newly-appointed special advisor to President McAleese, acts as his PR consultant.

Known as ‘The Kaiser' by some, Mr Desmond's appearance is distinguished by  a handlebar moustache.  He is hugely generous personally and, in the opinion of many associates, patriotic. One associate said of him rec