Lenihan was popular and widely seen as humorous and intelligent.

Currie later remarked that Lenihan was his personal friend, and that he felt personally sick at being asked to endorse somebody he did not like, for the sake of beating Lenihan.

Lenihan denied he had pressured the President but then a tape was produced of an ' on the record ' interview he had given to a postgraduate student the previous May in which he frankly discussed attempting to apply pressure.

Lenihan's role in the event in 1982, seemed to imply that he could be instructed by Haughey in his duties, and that in effect electing Lenihan was in effect empowering the controversial Haughey.

This plan, suggested by Brian Lenihan and Donogh O ' Malley, was dropped after opposition by Trinity College students.

Though publicly Taoiseach Charles Haughey insisted that it was entirely a matter for Lenihan, his " friend of thirty years " and that he was putting no pressure on him, in reality he gave Lenihan a letter of resignation to sign.

Haughey angrily denied the charge, though Lenihan, in his subsequently published account of the affair, noted that Haughey had denied " insulting " the officer, whereas the allegation was that he had " threatened " him.

The Presidential election was disappointing for Haughey with Brian Lenihan, the Tánaiste, who was nominated as the party's candidate, being defeated by Mary Robinson.

Lenihan was accused of calling and attempting to influence the President, who as Head of State is above politics.

It is suggested that Haughey was forced by O ' Malley to sack Lenihan in order to save the government, and stay on as Taoiseach.

* In May 1989 one of Haughey's lifelong friends Brian Lenihan, a former government minister, underwent a liver transplant which was partly paid for through fundraising by Haughey.

The tribunal identified one specific donation of £ 20, 000 for Lenihan that was surreptitiously appropriated by Haughey, who took steps to conceal this transaction.

In 1990 as part of his postgraduate thesis for his Master of Arts in Political Science Duffy interviewed senior politicians, one of whom was the then Tánaiste, Brian Lenihan.

In October 1990, in the midst of the presidential election, FitzGerald was to be a guest, alongside Lenihan, on RTÉ1's Questions and Answers political debate programme.

When challenged on the programme Lenihan maintained that his October 1990 version was correct, denying that he had played " any hand, act of part " in attempts to pressurise President Hillery.

FitzGerald aggressively challenged Lenihan, saying " I was in the Áras, Brian, and I know how many calls there were.

Aware that Lenihan had been one of Duffy's sources for the original article in September, with Duffy's permission the Irish Times ran a front page story stating that Lenihan had made the calls he was now denying.

Lenihan tried in a subsequent live television interview on the Six-One News to insist that what he had said to Duffy was wrong, insisting that " on mature recollection " his October 1990 version was the correct one, and all that he had said previously over eight years was incorrect.

She defeated Fianna Fáil's Brian Lenihan and Fine Gael's Austin Currie in the 1990 presidential election becoming, as an Independent candidate nominated by the Labour Party, the Workers ' Party and independent senators, the first elected president in the office's history not to have had the support of Fianna Fáil.

* November 1 – Mary Robinson defeats odds-on favourite Brian Lenihan to become the first female President of Ireland.

Younger men such as Brian Lenihan, Charles Haughey, Patrick Hillery and Michael Hilliard were all given their first Cabinet portfolios by Lemass, and ministers who joined under de Valera, such as Jack Lynch, Neil Blaney and Kevin Boland were promoted by the new Taoiseach.

He first achieved prominence in 1990 when the contents of his on-the-record interview with then Tánaiste Brian Lenihan, in which Lenihan admitted making calls to the residence of the Irish president seeking to speak to President Hillery to urge him to refuse a Dáil dissolution in controversial circumstances ( something he had previously denied ), led to Lenihan's dismissal from government, his defeat in that year's Irish presidential election and the unexpected election of the left wing liberal Mary Robinson as President of Ireland.

He decided to raise the issue of the calls again on the programme, given that in the preceding week Lenihan changed his story of eight years and had now denied twice, first in a student debate, then in an Irish Press interview with Emily O ' Reilly, making any calls.

Lenihan went on to become the first candidate from his party ever to lose an Irish presidential election, with the Irish Labour Party candidate, Mary Robinson, eventually winning the office.

Lenihan first entered politics in 1954 when he ran as a Fianna Fáil candidate in Longford-Westmeath in that year's general election.

Lenihan was the first, and so far the only, Fianna Fáil candidate to lose an Irish presidential election.

O ' Rourke and her brother, Brian Lenihan, became the first brother and sister in Irish history to serve in the same cabinet.

The failure to get the Fianna Fáil candidate, Brian Lenihan, elected as President of Ireland added to the pressure on Haughey's leadership.

Of the four Fianna Fáil candidates Lenihan was the only one not to be elected.

Lenihan moved his political base from rural Roscommon to Dublin County West, where he was elected again as a TD at the 1977 general election landslide victory by Fianna Fáil.

In the resulting by-election, his son Brian Lenihan, Jnr was elected to his seat.

In the 1997 general election another son, Conor Lenihan, was elected to Dáil Éireann.

After Hanafin and Lenihan had been eliminated from the contest and their surplus votes distributed, Martin emerged with 50 votes and was duly elected the eighth leader of Fianna Fáil.

Lenihan won the nomination but failed to be elected President and was also sacked from the government.

His son Brian Lenihan had been elected in the neighbouring constituency of Roscommon at the previous election in 1961.

However, after the death of the Fianna Fáil TD Patrick Lenihan, Cooney was elected to the 19th Dáil in the Longford – Westmeath by-election in April 1970.

During a broadcast in 1990 the then Tánaiste and expected next President of Ireland, Brian Lenihan, badly damaged his chances of being elected.

In the aftermath, the minority party in the coalition government, the Progressive Democrats indicated that unless Lenihan resigned from cabinet, they would resign from government and support an opposition motion of no confidence in Dáil Éireann, bringing down the government and causing a general election.

When he got there, he was informed that a series of telephone calls had been made by senior opposition figures ( and some independent TDs ), including Fianna Fáil leader ( and ex-Taoiseach ) Charles Haughey, Brian Lenihan and Sylvester Barrett demanding that the President, as he could constitutionally do where a Taoiseach had ' ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann ', refuse FitzGerald a parliamentary dissolution, forcing his resignation as Taoiseach and enabling the Dáil to nominate someone else for the post.

A few weeks before the election a scandal broke over the accusation that Lenihan had phoned President Hillery in 1982, asking him not to dissolve the Dáil following the fall of Garret FitzGerald's government.

Lenihan sat for many years as a Fianna Fáil representative in both houses of the Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann.

He was a member of a family political dynasty ; his father, Patrick Lenihan, and sister both followed him into Dáil Éireann ; his sister Mary O ' Rourke sitting in cabinet with him.

After four years as a senator, Lenihan finally secured a seat in Dáil Éireann following success in the 1961 general election.

Lenihan also dramatically lost his Roscommon-Leitrim Dáil seat.

In 1982, when Fianna Fáil regained power for ten months, Lenihan was Minister for Agriculture, the announcement in the Dáil being greeted by a sustained round of laughter on the opposition benches.

Two of her nephews, Brian Lenihan, Jnr and Conor Lenihan, both sons of her brother Brian, served as ministers in the government of the 30th Dáil.

He was succeeded by a Fine Gael-Labour coalition led by Enda Kenny, which took power on 9 March 2011 ; because Cowen was no longer a TD when the new Dáil convened, he was unable to preside over the opening ; Fianna Fáil Leader Micheál Martin and outgoing Finance Minister Brian Lenihan appeared on the government front bench in his stead.

Lenihan apologised in the Dáil for the remarks.

Patrick Lenihan was the only member of his family to serve in the Dáil who was not appointed a minister at some stage in his career.

* October 25-Presidential candidate Brian Lenihan denies that he tried to contact President Hillery to stop the dissolution of the Dáil in 1982.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Tom King, denounced the " outrage " in the House of Commons ( the lower house of the British parliament ), as did the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan in Dáil Éireann ( the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament ), while in Seanad Éireann Senator Maurice Manning spoke of people's " total revulsion ".

And contrary to the GAA policy of being apolitical Thomas Davis GAA club made it known that the Minister of State Conor Lenihan TD, the local Dáil representative, was no longer welcome at the club because of his support for Minister John O ' Donoghue's stance and called for the clubs members to make the stadium a General Election issue.