The dark truth of Irish Prime Minister Cowen’s drinking

By John Lee for the Daily Mail
Updated: 21:25 EDT, 18 September 2010

• Wednesdays are midweek ‘nights out’ as Thursday is not a Dáil day
  
• Members of the public report seeing him slumped at hotel bar
• One Budget night he went on a boozing binge into the early hours
• Even as a student, he spent all his food money on ‘liquid lunch’

Party boy: Brian Cowen the worse for wear at a Fianna Fáil function

It’s a habit he has long attempted to obscure - but one that many colleagues fear will now cost him his leadership of both party and country.

And now the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal the truly alarming extent - and duration - of Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s drinking.

Cowen loyalists have always reacted furiously to suggestions that the Offaly man is overly fond of the bottle and have managed to keep quiet a number of incidents over the years.

But a review of Mr Cowen’s public behaviour and his own admissions, coupled with extensive interviews of people who have witnessed the Taoiseach’s excessive consumption, reveals a habit of drinking that has been well known in Leinster House for more than a decade.

This is a man who has designated Wednesday nights as ‘drinking nights’ - when he is able to imbibe heavily because he does not go into the Dáil on Thursdays.

And while Mr Cowen has struggled to avoid being seen inebriated in public, he has the unlimited use of the Dáil’s private bar - making it easy to conceal the true and worrying extent of his consumption.

It is an open secret in the Dáil that at Leader’s Questions, Opposition spokesmen tailor their questions according to whether or not the Taoiseach is hungover. If he has had a particularly heavy night, they try to bait him - leading to the sort of angry outburst from Mr Cowen that they know will guarantee them television exposure.

The Taoiseach himself has admitted that his relationship with alcohol began early, with drink playing an important role in his law student days at University College Dublin.

In the late Eighties, he would visit his father, Ber Cowen, in Leinster House, looking for food because he preferred to spend his money on drink.

‘There was a natural inclination to call into the Dáil pretty regularly, anyway, if only to get a decent bit of grub,’ he said. ‘The food in the flat wouldn’t have been great. One had other uses for disposable income at that time as a young fellow – more liquid lunches than anything else.’

And those liquid lunches became easier to finance after Mr Cowen finished university and became a rising star in the Fianna Fáil party. Intelligent and rational, he demonstrated an astute political mind – but his involvement in party politics brought with it its own set of problems. 

Team talk: Making short work of a Guinness with Páidí Ó Sé in the Kerry football legend¿s pub in Ventry

Colleagues say his heavy drinking took a ‘dark turn’ during the Fianna Fáil wilderness years between 1994 and 1997, when the party was in opposition and there was little chance of promotion and none of exercising power.

‘Boredom can be a terrible thing for somebody of his undoubted intelligence,’ said a colleague who worked with him during this period.

‘He was razor sharp and energetic but front-bench opposition work did not suit him and he fell into irreversible habits. He drank hard.’

But even when the situation changed - with Fianna Fáil swept to victory under the leadership of Bertie Ahern in June 1997 - Mr Cowen continued his heavy drinking habits.

Mr Ahern - keen to maximise the young solicitor’s abilities, despite his close ties to arch rival Albert Reynolds - put Mr Cowen in charge of the Department of Health.

But the gravity of that position did not stop Mr Cowen’s drinking; in September 1998, numerous witnesses saw him drunk and dishevelled in Doheny & Nesbitt in Lower Baggot Street, one of his favourite haunts, on the night before Offaly won the All-Ireland hurling final. Mr Cowen was very obviously inebriated, singing The Town I Loved So Well to a bemused bar room.

But such incidents have become more frequent and more pronounced in recent years - all the more worrying because of the weighty ministerial positions Mr Cowen has held.

By the neck: Guzzling champagne at the election count centre in Birr in 2007

On the night of his first Budget as finance minister in December 2004, Mr Cowen couldn’t get out of the Dáil chamber quick enough. He dashed to another pub a few blocks from Leinster House, where he drank heavily until the early hours of the morning - even though the pub should have stopped serving at 11.30pm, with all customers cleared from the premises by midnight.

Witnesses told the MoS that Mr Cowen stayed in the pub until about 3am, when he was taken home by his garda driver. But he escaped censure and seemed emboldened by the apparent public indifference to his misbehaviour.

In October 2005, at the Fianna Fáil ard fheis - a booze-fuelled affair, like many of the party’s events - Mr Cowen was quite openly at the centre of the alcohol-fuelled fun.

‘I was drinking in his company. He was at the fun - he waltzed around the bar with a backbencher,’ a party member told the MoS - adding that a round of drink for Cowen’s party was costing €74.50.

The following year, a journalist ran into Mr Cowen in Jury’s Hotel in Ballsbridge – and found him seemingly the worse for wear.

‘We had sneaked in to the “residents only” Library Bar at Jurys for a late pint, no earlier than 12.30am,’ the journalist said.

‘Shortly after we arrived, Brian Cowen, in the company of a tall, well-dressed woman and a sharp- suited man, came in and took up a position at the bar. Cowen was drinking pints.

'Initially, he exchanged one-word greetings with people at the other end of the bar who’d obviously recognised him but who were not in his company.

‘He had his pint on the bar and he sat on a stool while the other two stood. They were close enough to where we were sitting for us to overhear snatches of conversation.  I went to the bar and passed between the couple and Cowen. He was slumped on the stool and seemed close to sleep.

‘As I stood next to him, I said: “How are you?” His reply was an unintelligible cross between an exhalation and a sigh, accompanied by a shaking of the head that set the jowls juddering. He seemed to me to be incapable of speech due to the amount of drink he’d taken. If he formulated a word, I couldn’t make it out.’

Head man: Another Guinness - one of many that day - on his homecoming to Offaly after assuming the leadership in 2008

He was equally uncommunicative in September 2007, at the parliamentary party think-in in Druid’s Glen. A new backbencher brought a reporter over to meet Mr Cowen.

‘It was early in the evening,’ the journalist recalled. ‘Cowen was sitting on a low stool in the middle of the main bar, on his own, staring into space. He looked unwell, either drunk or hungover.

‘The introductions were made but Mr Cowen did not seem up to a chat. I quickly left when I realised he was incapable of speaking.’

The following day, he refused the offer of a round of golf and chose instead to stay drinking at the bar.

‘At 7pm, I was leaving and passed the bar,’ said one witness. ‘Cowen was still at the bar, drinking large bottle of Bulmers, deep in conversation with colleagues.

‘Everybody else had left but the minister for finance was still drinking on the Tuesday evening.’

The next year, in 2008, Mr Cowen was appointed, unopposed, as Taoiseach, replacing Bertie Ahern - but even leading the country still did little to curb his drinking.

His triumphant homecoming to Offaly was filled with booze, as constituents handed him drinks throughout the day. He was repeatedly seen and pictured with pints of Guinness; a reporter who followed his entourage said the drinking was open and unabashed.

‘Between Tullamore and Clara, in a small town - barely a crossroads - Mr Cowen jumped out of his car and greeted the 30-odd people there. Somebody came out of a nearby bar and handed him a Guinness. Before it even settled, he grabbed it and drank it in three gulps.’

Neither did Mr Cowen make any effort to conceal his drinking habits when abroad on State business; in July 2008, he took his first trip as Taoiseach to New York - where he had worked on a building site in his student days.

‘Cowen stayed in Fitzpatrick’s Hotel but the press corps was kept away by civil servants. Still, we observed a telling incident at offices of the Consulate General on Park Avenue. In the early evening, he gave his usual speech, half an hour.

‘There was a free bar and as soon as he stepped down from stage, somebody shoved a bottle of Heineken in his hand. He loosened his tie and top button, put his hand through his hair and took long swig from the bottle.’

Two months later, he returned to New York for a United Nations event - again staying at Fitzpatrick’s and again sparking reports of heavy drinking.

In April 2009, Mr Cowen attended a number of Fianna Fáil functions in Cork before going to the West Cork wedding of Batt O’Keeffe’s daughter.

‘He was seen drinking enthusiastically at a number of events that day. He was seen drinking whiskey at the Midleton Distillery with local TD Michael Ahern by lunchtime,’ one eyewitness said.

Tanaiste claims drinking furore means politicians ‘will not be allowed to enjoy personal freedoms’

By PADDY CLANCY

Tanaiste Mary Coughlan has protested that politicians in Ireland are in danger of being over scrutinised if they have to constantly answer to the public on what time they went to bed, what time they got up, what they ate and who they had met.

She was defending Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s late-night carousing in Galway that left him in poor condition for his controversial Morning Ireland radio interview just a few hours later.

Defence: Mary Coughlan and Dermot Ahern have spoken out in favour of the PM

When it was put to her that Mr Cowen’s socialising until after 3am on Tuesday may have affected his interview performance, she said: ‘If we as politicians and as human beings are not allowed to live in this country with the freedom that every person else has, it’s a very sad day.’

Miss Coughlan, who as Education Minister was visiting Scoil Mhuire National School in Pettigo in her South West Donegal constituency on Friday, accepted that Mr Cowen’s interview left a lot to be desired but she insisted there was nothing wrong with the content of it.

She went on: ‘We are going to be asked what time we went to bed, what time did we get up, what did we eat, where did we go, who did we talk to? Then I think we are taking politics too far.’

She said that the Taoiseach had prepared properly for the week’s interviews but the Galway gathering was the only time all the parliamentary party could come together.

The parliamentary party and the Cabinet had accepted the Taoiseach’s policy and were now anxious to get on with the business of governing, she said.

The Tánaiste emphasised that the reports around the world had omitted important facts.

She said: ‘He wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t hung over but it was a poor interview on the basis the man had a hoarseness and I don’t think it is appropriate to be having these live interviews in restaurants where people are having their breakfast, and noise and distraction.’

Meanwhile, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern told Newstalk radio: ‘Everyone is human and we all have frailties. Brian Cowen has a difficulty in relation to nasal congestion; I think that is well known and there are times when that does affect him.’