On the morning of 31 January 1992, Charles Haughey told the weekly meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party that he would resign the following week as leader of the party after a tumultuous twelve years at the helm. He told his colleagues, many of whom had plotted for years to unseat him, that those parliamentary party meetings were central to his life as within them one could feel the pulse of the nation, such was the diverse makeup of the party. On that morning, Haughey spoke to 76 other Fianna Fáil deputies and assured them that, despite the specious…