Ok, I made some changes, and it does the first part in a 0.1s now, and the second part in 7s.  However the code looks very much like an imperative language now.  There is a loop over a list inside which we do things, and use the State Monad to change things. 

The result is still slower than Python and less readable now. 

https://git.coop/kat/aoc2018/blob/master/9.hs 

#Haskell