Charles James Haughey 1925 - 2006

Eric Craigie in his book “An Irish Sporting Life" tells how Mr. Haughey and he became friends through stag hunting.  Mr Haughey asked him to teach him to fish for salmon.  Eric was pleased to arrange lessons for him in Shean.

Eric invited a party of high-powered people to join him; it also included his daughter and her friend. The fishing had not been good, but he had the idea of naming a recently improved weir after the minister.  Mr Haughey had been given angling lessons by Frank, the resident guide, and was pronounced by him to be an “excellent man to throw a line." He was to cast a fly across the pool and pronounce it 'open'. He must have put a really huge effort into the casting of that fly so that it would travel to the other bank, except, and unfortunately, the fly was firmly impaled in the minister's ear.

While the spectators enjoyed the Champagne Reception, Eric's daughter and her friend - both nurses - were given the task of extricating the impaled fly. Eric describes how he arrived in the kitchen which he said looked like shambles there was so much blood, and he ends his story at that point in his book.

His daughter told me later, that she and her buddy were getting a hard time from the then minister and decided to return the compliment by extending the poking and prodding to remove the fly.  They said were not molested again by him.