When The Boss: Charles J Haughey in Government, a political exposé of phone-tapping, corruption and misuse of police powers, was published in 1983, it became the Irish bestseller that branded the image of a scandal-prone taoiseach (prime minister) on to the public’s imagination. The compelling and detailed investigation by Joe Joyce, the former Irish Times and Guardian journalist, who has died aged 76, and Peter Murtagh delivered such a searing insight into party machinations that Haughey was reported to have almost been reduced to tears.
Journalists’ phones were revealed to have been bugged by the police and political favours routinely traded for votes. The country’s largest bookseller refused to stock The Boss until a public tribunal eventually vindicated the authors’ findings.
