Although a few voices have been raised in opposition, Terence MacCarthy is finally about to be recognised as a chief . . .
    There was at least one individual who was concerned over the prospect of Terence MacCarthy securing recognition as a chief from the Office of the Chief Herald, namely, the author Valerie Bary, who resides in County Kerry. Mrs Bary wrote to Chief Herald Begley outlining her objections, but this correspondence is no longer extant in the Office. However, copies of other letters in the writer’s possession confirm the fact of Mrs Bary’s intervention. Thus as early as September 1982 she replied to a letter sent by Terence MacCarthy stating that she was ‘rather appalled by it’, and advising him that he could not call himself Mac Carthy Mór without  presenting proof of descent. In April 1991 Mrs Bary wrote as follows to another correspondent:
    Perhaps at least partly because he was now being accepted by people in high places, Mrs Bary’s opposition could safely be ignored by Chief Herald Begley, and MacCarthy’s wait for recognition was about to come to an end. In addition, the heraldic expert Gerard Crotty was an important adviser and liaison with the Office of the Chief Herald during the process of gaining recognition, and his advocacy must have helped MacCarthy’s cause. By late October 1991 it was clear that the process of granting recognition was in its final stages, as MacCarthy was making corrections to a draft pedigree sent to him by Deputy Chief Herald Fergus Gillespie. MacCarthy insisted that his grandfather succeeded Samuel Trant McCarthy as Mac Carthy Mór in 1927, and that after his grandfather’s death in 1947 his father had been chief until 1980, when MacCarthy himself had succeeded. Reinforcing the point, MacCarthy declared, ‘If I did not insist on these particular amendments the pedigree would be a published libel against my father and grandfather, both of whom used the title’. There was one other delicate matter requiring adjustment, namely, MacCarthy’s place of residence: ‘I do not wish to be described as “of Belfast” as I am ONLY of “Tangier in the Kingdom of Morocco”. Belfast has such a notorious name I do not want it spoiling my pedigree!’.
    The Office of the Chief Herald finally produced for MacCarthy on 28 January 1992 a certificate of his recognition by courtesy as Mac Carthy Mór, which took the form of a document headed with his title and arms, followed by a pedigree commencing with Oengus, King of Munster who died about 490 AD, and concluding with Terence himself. Nothing if not obliging, the Office of the Chief Herald decided not to spoil the effect by including the dread name of Belfast, stating only that Terence was ‘resident in Tangier, Kingdom of Morocco’. The document was completed with the signatures of both Chief Herald Begley and Deputy Chief Herald Gillespie, and the official seal of the Office of the Chief Herald.

    On 16 June 1999 the author issues a report exposing the falsity of MacCarthy's claim to chiefship . . .
    The Sunday Times has a track record of publishing pieces relating to genealogy, covering for example the controversy over the sale of feudal titles in England. It was decided therefore to bring the story to the attention of the Irish Office of this newspaper first, and a copy of the completed MacCarthy report was duly posted off. The newspaper reacted with a speed which frankly surprised me, and I was telephoned by the journalist John Burns within a day. Burns indicated that he was already well acquainted with the facts of the MacCarthy case, and confirmed my view that serious irregularities were involved. Burns also stated that it was planned to publish an article on the subject in the next edition of the newspaper, and that as well as speaking to Chief Herald O Donoghue, he was endeavouring to contact MacCarthy.
    Burns’s story appeared in the Irish Edition of the Sunday Times of 20 June 1999, and a fairly devastating piece of journalism it turned out to be. Burns reported that in an ‘unprecedented climbdown’, O Donoghue was expected to strip MacCarthy of recognition within a month. O Donoghue was quoted as confirming that he had been investigating the case for two years, following the receipt of Barry Trant McCarthy’s counter-claim to the chiefship. The article was accompanied by a photograph of O Donoghue outside the National Library, with another of the present writer, and a third of MacCarthy with President Mary Robinson and her husband during their encounter in Cashel in 1996. Burns also revealed the circumstances in which Terence’s elder brother Anthony ‘Boot’ MacCarthy had died in 1987, and the fact that Terence’s partner Andrew Davison had been imprisoned for blackmail.
    The Sunday Times article cited the present writer’s report as well, describing its author accurately enough as ‘a Wicklow genealogist working independently of the Chief Herald’. My main conclusions were reproduced, namely, that MacCarthy’s claim to be a chief was not proven, that he came of a relatively humble Belfast family with no proven connection to the MacCarthys of Munster, and that the decision by a former Chief Herald to recognise him was wrong and should be rescinded. There were others in the small world of Irish genealogy who knew all this and more, but the important point is that none were willing to stick their heads above the parapet and go on the record with a documented presentation of the facts.

    Terence has 'abdicated' as Mac Carthy Mór and retired back to Morocco, where the late Pete McCarthy pays him a visit . . .
    The humorous writer Pete McCarthy’s second book on things relating to his surname features Terence MacCarthy in a prominent role [The Road to McCarthy, Hodder & Stoughton, London 2002, Chapter 4]. Pete has succeeded in getting closer than most to the now ‘abdicated’ Terence, tracking him down in Tangier with the assistance of his brothers Conor and Tommy MacCarthy from Belfast. Pete arrives by appointment to meet the former chief at his ‘pink-walled villa’ on the outskirts of the city, and Terence appears to greet him, ‘a large, rotund man in his forties, smiling and jolly, wearing a well-pressed V-neck woollie over a collar and tie, fixed with what looks like a diamond tie pin’. While Conor is now, as we have seen, ostensibly the new ‘Mac Carthy Mór’, Pete notices that he and his brother Tommy both defer to Terence. Also present are Andrew Davison and his mother Betty, introduced by Terence as his ‘cousins’ before they depart diplomatically for a dinner appointment. Although clearly not convinced of Terence’s authenticity, Pete is greatly entertained by his diatribes against English kings, the Roman Catholic Church and modern Republicans, who were together allegedly responsible for crushing ‘all that was indigenous and Gaelic’. As for his own abdication or overthrow, Terence claims to have been targeted on account of his ‘political ideas’ and ‘for denouncing the hijack of the Gaelic chiefs by the heritage and tourism industries’.
    Back in Ireland, Pete meets another and unnamed chief who has been making it his business to expose Terence, and who hands over a dossier with the mysterious comment: ‘These documents are not in the public domain. They were secretly photocopied in Irish government departments. If asked, I will deny they came from me.’ While we should allow for the licence which the author may have allowed himself to reconstruct dialogue, it has been demonstrated in the preceding chapter that official documents relating to Terence MacCarthy were indeed strategically leaked. Alas, the weighty dossier of exposure is lost on Pete, as after a few minutes reading about the Niadh Nask, primogeniture, King Zog of Albania, and so forth, he puts it to one side, has a whiskey and falls asleep watching television.

    Unfortunately, the Mac Carthy Mór case is not the only irregularity to have occurred in the Office of the Chief Herald . . .
    Again, some of the records which were released under the Freedom of Information Act enabled me to see how my criticisms of the handling of the chiefs and allied scandals were being fielded in official correspondence. A letter of the Chief Herald dated June 2000 declared that ‘the allegation that numbers of bogus pedigrees, arms and titles have been registered in the Genealogical Office is one which is routinely made by Sean Murphy and by him alone’, and that ‘no evidence to support sweeping allegations of this kind has been produced’. The first part of this statement was certainly factually correct, for I was indeed virtually a lone voice, but the assertion that I had produced no evidence to support my charges required a rebuttal. In the first place, I put it to the Chief Herald that my documented series of reports on the Mac Carthy Mór, Maguire and other chiefships alone amply supported my charge of multiple false registrations. Taking into consideration other impostors validated by his Office, such as Andrew Davison and Thomas Foran, and my case looked stronger still. When one considered as well the Office’s acceptance of ‘feudal lordships’, my charges appeared rather well founded. But that was not the end of the matter, for when my itemisation of the Office’s rubber stamping of the Duchess of Braganza’s spurious grants was taken into account, my case was irrefutable, and the above quoted comments were themselves clearly shown to be groundless. Furthermore, given that, as the Chief Herald had earlier put it, I had ‘uncovered only a fraction of what is there to be turned up’, who knows what other irregularities remain to be discovered.

    The Chief Herald and the Government decide to abandon the procedure of recognising chiefs . . .
    Subsequent to the withdrawal of recognition from Terence MacCarthy in 1999, periodic questions by opposition politicians in the Dáil had kept the chiefs issue in view. Thus in response to a parliamentary question put by Eamonn Gilmore TD, Minister O’Donoghue indicated in December 2002 that the Attorney General had now provided legal advice on the matter of recognising chiefs which was being considered by the Chief Herald. Responding to a further question on recognition of chiefs put down by Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister O’Donoghue declared in May 2003, ‘I hope to come to a decision in the matter in the near future’. The evidence of growing detachment had been plain to see for some time, so there was no real surprise when it emerged that in line with a recommendation of Director/Chief Herald O Donoghue and the Council of Trustees of the National Library, the Government had decided at a Cabinet meeting on 23 July 2003 to sanction the discontinuation of the practice of granting courtesy recognition to chiefs. A spokesman for Minister O’Donoghue was quoted as stating that ‘in view of the lack of legal powers, and as the practice of granting (sic)  courtesy titles has little in common with a modern state, it should be discontinued’.
    In an explanatory letter to the chiefs, sent be it noted after the public revelation that courtesy recognition was being discontinued, Director/Chief Herald O Donoghue summarised the advice of the Office of the Attorney General (current incumbent Rory Brady) as follows:
The thoroughness of the purge was demonstrated by the subsequent removal of every one of the banners of chiefs which had been on display in the Heraldic Museum in Kildare Street.

    The author makes a case for the reintroduction of some system of validating claims to chiefship . . .
    While there should be no question of authentic Irish chiefs receiving any special privileges, their venerable titles are a reminder of a lost aristocratic Gaelic world, and a valuable part of our heritage which should be recognised as such in a cultured Republic. If MacLysaght’s system of courtesy recognition is to be reinstated, as the present writer believes it should be, strict and well defined procedures for making application will have to be put in place. In short, to be successful, applicants for recognition will have to demonstrate conclusively that they are the senior, and for the present at least, male descendants of the last duly inaugurated chief. Each applicant for courtesy recognition of chiefship proper should be required to submit a detailed and professionally compiled pedigree in a specified format, citing documentary sources and indeed appending copies of same, as well as providing evidence that all reasonable efforts have been made to trace possibly more senior lines of the family.
    The need for such a system of validation is demonstrated by a case which has recently come to prominence, namely, the claim of Tom Sweeney to be The Mac Sweeney Doe. As noted in an earlier chapter, the scholar John O’Donovan recorded the pedigree of a claimant to the chiefship in 1835, and it is Sweeney’s case that he is the senior descendant of that individual. Although the Office of the Chief Herald is no longer formally involved in recognising chiefs, Sweeney’s website features supportive pieces by personnel associated with the Office, namely Deputy Chief Herald Fergus Gillespie and genealogical consultant Máire MacConghail. The latter is stated to have been nominated by the Chief Herald to investigate Sweeney’s case, and extracts from her report are quoted as effectively validating his claim to chiefship. Yet there are problems, including the fact that O’Donovan’s pedigree appears to be a generation short and is not supported by documentation, matters which it has not proved possible to clarify. It is also interesting to note that the ‘official’ Sweeney Clan now ignores Tom Sweeney’s claim, but continues to recognise the claims of Loughlin Sweeney and Richard Mingo Sweeney to be chiefs of the Fanad and Banagh branches, and appoints an ‘honorary’ Mac Sweeney Doe.
    For reasons already set out, we cannot look to the Office of the Chief Herald as it stands for any initiative to restore MacLysaght’s system of courtesy recognition. Perhaps the newly structured Board of the National Library might be persuaded, with Government approval, to have a committee revisit the matter of verifying chiefships in the future. Of course the restoration of the system of courtesy recognition of chiefs devised by Edward MacLysaght would require suitable adjustments to take account of modern conditions, and the full range of options could be considered by such a committee.

Extracts from pages 63-65, 124-25, 161-62, 177-78, 190-91, 194-95; footnoted references and a full sources list are given in the book.