{"id":656471,"date":"2026-10-16T11:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T11:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656471\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T11:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T11:04:08","slug":"haughey-quietly-intervened-while-gravely-ill-to-increase-naval-funding-ex-chief-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656471\/","title":{"rendered":"Haughey \u2018quietly intervened\u2019 while gravely ill to increase naval funding, ex-chief says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former chief of the Irish Naval Service<\/a> has said he believes former taoiseach Charles Haughey<\/a> \u201cquietly intervened\u201d about Ireland needing greater investment in ships. <\/p>\n

Vice-admiral Mark Mellett, also former chief of staff of the Defence Forces<\/a>, said an interaction with Haughey taught him how political influence can sometimes work in \u201cunexpected ways\u201d. <\/p>\n

Mellett was speaking about his new book Blue Heart: War, Climate and the Battle for the Ocean that Keeps us Alive at the Institute of International & European Affairs<\/a> on Thursday evening. <\/p>\n

Mellett recalled how in late 2005 while he was commanding L\u00c9 Eithne, he received an unexpected satellite telephone call from the former taoiseach who wanted to know when the ship would next be in Dublin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI invited him [Haughey] aboard, but he explained that he was no longer well enough to visit. Haughey was seriously ill at the time,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, he invited me with some of the crew to visit his home in Kinsealy. We brought a video tribute from the ship\u2019s company set to the music of Coldplay\u2019s Yellow. Back then our survival suits were bright yellow and the music seemed particularly apt … We discussed the Naval Service and the need for Ireland to invest in larger, more capable ships, including a multi-role vessel that could support a wider range of defence, humanitarian and national tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot long afterwards, a message came from Bertie Ahern<\/a>\u2019s office: \u2018You did a good thing just there\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mellett said that at a subsequent government briefing, Ahern, who was taoiseach at the time, questioned why naval investment had been neglected and \u201cmade clear his view that Ireland needed more ships, and bigger ships\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always believed that Haughey had quietly intervened,\u201d said Mellett. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe episode taught me something about how political influence can work, sometimes in unexpected ways. But it also reinforced a frustration that followed me throughout my career: the distance between recognising a strategic requirement, securing political support and actually delivering the capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that it is a problem that extends well beyond defence and can be seen today in energy infrastructure, climate adaptation and \u201cmany other areas where decisions taken now will shape the country for decades\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mellett said one of the central arguments he makes in his book is that \u201cwe continue to organise our institutions\u201d around problems that are increasingly interconnected.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change is not simply an environmental issue. It affects food production, migration, energy systems, economic stability and national security,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe ocean sits at the heart of many of these relationships, yet remains remarkably peripheral to political and strategic thinking. That is why I argue for a fundamentally different approach to ocean governance, including the establishment of a department of the ocean in Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former chief of the Irish Naval Service has said he believes former taoiseach Charles Haughey \u201cquietly intervened\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[894,72,6231,13308,61,100876,60,4187],"class_list":["post-656471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bertie-ahern","tag-business","tag-charles-haughey","tag-defence-forces","tag-ie","tag-institute-of-international-and-european-affairs-iiea","tag-ireland","tag-irish-naval-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}