WHEN Ben Dunne slunk home to Dublin from that fateful cocainefuelled night in a Florida hotel in February 1992, his big sister and fellow director of the Dunnes empire, Margaret Heffernan, is reported to have scoffed to solicitor Noel Smyth: "I'm sorry the little bastard didn't go to jail".

Ben's antics in Florida that night, prostitute in tow, sparked a vicious internal family feud culminating in Ben's humiliating expulsion from the multi-billion grocery and hardware business.

So it was something of a surprise then that, last Monday, the normally media-shy Heffernan gushed to Joe Duffy on Liveline . . . in the wake of receiving an honorary doctorate from the NUI . . .

that despite all the boardroom blood-letting, she had always "loved her little brother to bits".

Of course, Ben's attempts to throw himself off the balcony of that Florida hotel not only brought "shame and disgrace on the family", as Heffernan once put it, but begat the McCracken and Moriarty tribunals which ultimately brought down Charles Haughey when it emerged that Ben had given him almost 2m to 'help him out'.

Recovering after another, and final, cocaine episode incident in which he broke both his ankles, Ben was being pushed in a wheelchair by Haughey close to the lake in the grounds of his Georgian home in Abbeville. "If I had known what was coming, I'd have pushed him into the f***ing lake, " Haughey told a confidante years later, according to Liam Collins' book, Irish Family Feuds.

The first person Ben called after the Florida incident was Haughey who, however, failed to keep it out of the papers when the Sunday Tribune broke the story. The cocaine-fuelled Dunne had attempted to throw himself off the balcony of the Florida hotel convinced that he was about to be kidnapped . . . again.

Dramatic kidnapping Ben later put his 'problems' down to the fact that he had never really sought help to get over the trauma which followed his kidnapping by the IRA in 1981. That dramatic kidnapping also showed the family's pragmatic approach to a crisis.

When an informant approached the Dunne family saying he could get Ben released for �50,000, the family agreed . . . but asked for a receipt.

For Margaret Heffernan, Ben's extra-curricular activities in Florida were the final straw and while he recuperated by taking a year off, she vowed to get him out of the business. At one point Heffernan, together with Frank Dunne . . . who by this time had come over to his younger sister's view of Ben . . . offered to pay him �1.5m a year just to stay away.

But the brother and sister had never really got on and Heffernan resented her little brother for muscling into the top table after Ben Dunne senior died in 1983.

There was, however, an element of snobbishness involved as well. The cigar-smoking Ben was no stranger to the social pages of the newspapers while Margaret went for a more subdued role, spending more time with her consultant husband in their south Dublin family home.

Ben also closely followed his father's business dictum of 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' and was constantly scouring the world for cheap clothes. The joke at the time was that Ben's specialist chosen topic for the quiz show Mastermindwas 'Anoraks.

From 1299 to 1599'.

Heffernan wanted to go more upmarket to reflect the boom which was just blossoming in Ireland at the time. In the middle of the boardroom battle, Ben flew to Singapore and without telling anybody bought �20m worth of cheap nylon shirts.

When he returned, Heffernan flipped and ordered him straight back to Singapore to cancel the order.

Then Ben walked in on a crucial meeting Heffernan was having with senior businessmen from Waterford Foods. "I am a 20% shareholder and I'm here to see what is going on, " said Ben. "This meeting is cancelled, " Heffernan replied.

'Better get used to it' Ben then walked over to Heffernan and, to the horror of the Waterford Foods representatives, dropped his lit cigarette into her mineral water and said; "I am here and I am going to do more than this and you'd better get used to it".

Heffernan had no intention of getting "used to" her little brother's behaviour which had brought "disgrace" on the family. But Ben was equally determined. At one stage he marched into the offices of company accountants Oliver Freaney shouting; "You f***ing bollocks. I'm a street fighter and you won't get me out of the company as easy as you think."

Later Heffernan threatened to get a court order preventing Ben from coming to the office.

By this stage, senior management in Dunnes were getting caught in the crossfire, incurring the wrath of one warring sibling if they appeared to favour the other.

The company's security chief, Sean Cavanagh, was one such victim when he was almost reduced to tears when sacked by Heffernan. "She (Heffernan) was slapping the desk. She was sitting opposite me across the table, her face as white as a sheet and black hair streaming across her face, " was how he later described the meeting which led to his dismissal.

When Ben got word of his supporters being picked off, he began High Court proceedings to stop the company sacking anybody earning over �30,000, a manager's salary at the time.

By this time Ben was goading Margaret over the amount of money he gave to Haughey. Ominously, Heffernan began to investigate these payments taking regular trips in the black Mercedes to Kinsealy to probe the former Taoiseach who denied everything.

As the row headed for the High Court, Haughey tried to convince Heffernan to pull back expressing concern about what a public court hearing would do to the family's reputation.

While a settlement was made 48 hours before the public had their fun, affidavits had been lodged containing the fateful facts which fingered Haughey, Martin Lowry and spawned our current spate of tribunals.

Ben received over �100m and left the firm. Margaret inherited the shares of her sister Therese, who had died the previous year of alcoholism when only in her mid-40s. This cemented Heffernan's control and along with Frank Dunne she has expanded the company ever since.

In last Monday's Liveline interview, Heffernan declared that a lot of the success of the company was down to the staff who, as with Ben, she also said she loved as a family. But as with Ben, this declaration might take most of the Dunnes 16,000 staff in the Republic of Ireland by surprise.

"The most difficult company we have ever had to deal with and continues to be so today, " said a spokesman for Mandate, the shop workers' union which has been engaged in countless battles with Heffernan. "Three national strikes between 1994 and 1996 tell their own story, " he added.

Even today, the vast majority of Dunnes' employees are on nine-month contracts, meaning they do not have enough service to avail of the basic employment protection which requires a minimum of one year's service. Turnover among Heffernan's 'family' of employees is running at well over 100%.

Cheap food and clothes During the most critical three-week nationwide strike in the summer of 1995, Heffernan, who had only just assumed control of the company, finally agreed to go to the Labour Court. But rather than set out the business arguments against the union's claim, Dunnes questioned why it was in court at all as it had been instrumental in providing the Irish people with access to cheap food and clothes during the gloomy years of the 1950s.

Those pleas didn't work and Heffernan lost the 1995 strike to Mandate, if only because the company's refusal to say anything to the media meant they lost the PR battle.

At the end of one night's lengthy talks at the Labour Court, the Dunnes executives fled so fast down the Labour Court steps that the waiting RTE cameraman missed the shot for the 9 o'clock news. It was a considerable journalistic coup, then, that RTE's industrial correspondent, Joe O'Brien, chased after them and persuaded the terrified executives to retrace their steps for the cameras.

"When I was running Dunnes Stores, everyone knew who I was . . . but there was a policy, and still is a policy, at Dunnes Stores of no comment, " Ben Dunne remarked two years ago. "It's a bit old fashioned and Victorian. An organisation of that size needs someone who is available to speak to the media. They're a bit like the royal family, aren't they?"

Heffernan was back in trouble with Mandate a year later, this time over her refusal to pay triple time to staff working over the Christmas week.

Mandate organised newspaper ads depicting a bare Christmas tree, with copy saying that this was Dunnes' version of Christmas. Heffernan was so incensed by the ads she secured an interlocutory injunction preventing the newspapers from running them.

This immediately prompted a hail of news stories and, while Mandate eventually secured the right to publish, Heffernan had by then been subjected to far more negative publicity than if she had let the ads run in the first place.

Dunnes Stores pays the going rate and is not the worst employer in the country, a union official explains, but their problem is that the family can't bear being told what to do by anybody outside the family trust. This includes governments, employment lobby groups such as Ibec and trade unions, he added.

Ben Dunne Senior was tough but you could do a deal with him, said the union official, pointing out that the breakdown in trust with the staff has its roots in the record two-and-a-half-year strike in the Henry Street branch when 12 workers refused to handle South African goods in protest at their apartheid policy.

Despite widespread support from all quarters for the shop assistants, with even Bishop Desmond Tutu visiting the picket line, Dunnes stuck to their guns. "We had made the decision as a company that we couldn't allow people in the organisation to decide what goods to sell and what not to sell, " said Ben Dunne.

And despite Heffernan's platitudes on radio last week, it seems little has changed. In late 2005, she sacked shop worker Joanne Delaney for wearing a union badge on her uniform. With echoes of the South African dispute, the dismissal was condemned in the Dail and the UK houses of parliament before Dunnes eventually succumbed and reinstated Delaney early last year.

Drunk on the job Regular visitors to the Employment Appeals Tribunal which rules on unfair dismissals, Dunnes was in 2004 forced to pay one of its checkout managers the maximum two-year payout of 54,600 after accusing her of being drunk on the job. Even if the allegation of being drunk was true, the sanction was "grossly disproportionate, " said the Tribunal.

In 1999, the company again ran foul of the media when it sacked 13 workers en masse at the Terryland store in Galway for taking part in what the company said was unofficial action. But again the workers were awarded a total of �70,000 ( 90,000) after the Tribunal ruled that the 13 were part of around 40 workers involved in an information meeting about three colleagues who had been suspended.

Last year, Dunnes had to pay out 25,000 to a store manager after it sacked him for arriving 10 minutes late for work one morning, which meant the store had opened late.

Three years ago, the Labour Court ordered Dunnes to re-employ a 38-year-old man who had been sacked for wearing a goatee beard. The worker explained that initially he was told beards were acceptable as long as they were neat and tidy.

But later the company told him it was unacceptable and forced him to wear a mask or 'snood' to hide the beard, which he refused to do after being jeered by colleagues.

All's fair in love and war then.

MEET THE FAMILY

Ben Dunne Senior, founder of Dunnes empire: Died 1983. Rather than pass on the business to his sons and daughters, Ben Snr set up a trust in 1981 giving them each an equal share. "I want to make the Dunne family work. They will have to work for 21 years or else go bankrupt, " he said. The empire was divided between:

Margaret Heffernan (65): Director of textiles. Married to consultant Dr Andrew Heffernan.

Three children, Anne, Andrew and Michael who is head of textiles in Dunnes.

Frank Dunne (64): Managing director. No children.

Ben Dunne Jnr (58): Ousted from the boardroom in 1994 following cocaine bust in Florida hotel. Owner of health and "tness clubs. Two children, Mark and Caroline.

Elizabeth Dunne: Died in her 40s. Four children: Sharon, Brian, Paul and John, with Sharon (McMahon) tipped to succeed Margaret Heffernan.

Therese Dunne: Died from alcohol-related illness in 1995.

Anne Dunne: Fell ill at the age of 12 and was not involved in the trust.

Dunnes Stores has 152 stores in Ireland, England, Scotland and Spain, 18,000 employees and a turnover estimated at 2bn a year.