Poor Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach, (Prime Minister) is living proof that in spite of the economic boom in Ireland “The Celtic Tiger” which has seen Ireland transformed in the past 20 years to the economy with the second highest per capita GDP (after Luxembourg) in Europe poverty remains a pressing issue.
The Bold Bertie (as he is known to his cronies) has always presented himself as an anorak clad Man of the People staying true to his roots in the local area of Drumcondra on Dublin’s Northside where he grew up and where his father was a humble handyman at a local college for 50 years. Indeed in the past he has contrasted himself with one of his predecessors, Charles Haughey, who lived in a palatial mansion by saying he was always content to live in his unprepossessing house in Drumcondra called “All Hallows” after the college where his father
worked.
All Hallows College, Drumcondra
Imagine then the public surprise at his testimony to the “McMahon Enquiry”, a tribunal of enquiry in Ireland chaired by a High Court Judge, into alleged political corruption in Ireland that when Minister of Finance in the early 1990’s he receive substantial donations in cash from “friends” who felt sorry for him after his marriage broke up and he was living in a 2 room flat above his constituency office.
Although few regard Mr Ahern as a corrupt politician, his performance at the tribunal has been widely described as confusing and more baffling than illuminating. His testimony, which was at variance with bank records, was characterised by vagueness and claims of memory lapses. His epic interrogation, the culmination of an inquiry which has gone on for more than seven years, was unsatisfactory for the tribunal and the Taoiseach himself.
It pitted Mr Ahern – once famously described as "the most skilful, the most devious and the most cunning of them all" – in a tense contest against the cream of the Dublin legal profession. In the witness box he made no damning admissions, but nor did he succeed in clarifying to general satisfaction a convincing narrative that might explain the transactions, which totalled £68,000. Mr Ahern stuck by his assertion that he had "done nothing improper... done no wrong and wronged no one."
But his performance was described as "evasive, bewildering and confusing". As one headline summed it up: "17 hours in witness box – still no answers". A newspaper poll found that only one in three voters believed his account.
That account, and the evidence of a number of other witnesses, provided fascinating glimpses of the financial arrangements of the man who in the early 1990s was Minister for Finance and who expected to become Prime Minister.
At that time, as part of a complicated house deal, an Irish businessman told of heaping about £28,000 in cash on a table in Mr Ahern's constituency office. Mr Ahern had accepted the money, had not counted it and had shown "no particular reaction", he said. Mr Ahern testified that the money was not for him, but to do up a house which the businessman would buy and he would rent.
Fagan's Pub Exterior
Fagan's Pub Interior
In another pub, The Beaumont Arms, the owner testified that he and some friends of Bertie felt sorry for him and gave him 16,500 euros as he was quietly minding his own business and having a pint in the pub (with his ministerial Mercedes and driver parked outside) because somebody in his position “should have a proper house to live in!”
On another occasion whilst enjoying a freebie trip to Manchester to see his favourite team, Manchester United, play at Old Trafford the company at a dinner in the Four Seasons Hotel astonished him with a spontaneous whip around of 5,000 pounds and poor Bertie testified he was lost for words when this was given to him, although you may think he must have had a standard speech prepared as the unexpected had become a frequent occurrence by this stage.
The public gallery of the tribunal, held at Dublin Castle, has been packed for the past few weeks, with factions for and against Mr Ahern making their opinions evident. The occasion was viewed by some as an enthralling spectator sport. Celia Larkin, Mr Ahern's girlfriend at the time, provoked laughter in the gallery when she testified: "Bertie dealt in cash. I think he felt more comfortable with it."
In another example of his attachment to ready money, she said Mr Ahern had driven her to a bank in Dublin's O'Connell Street, waiting while she went in and withdrew £50,000. Mr Ahern testified that she had collected the money, but said he did not recall personally taking her to the bank. Such incidents were among the more accessible, and entertaining, parts of proceedings which also consisted of stretches of mind-numbing minutiae centring on five transactions. Hours were spent toiling over foreign-exchange transactions, with tribunal staff evidently suspecting that something fishy had happened. Mr Ahern was adamant he never dealt in US currency: "There were no dollars. There were never dollars. It's a complete red herring," he said. But not all of his evidence was so forthright, which means that his finances remain shrouded in uncertainty. He can also be comical. He once reputedly condemned political exchanges as "throwing white elephants and red herrings at each other".
While the practice of declining to dispel imprecision is regarded as a legitimate political ploy, past scandals involving his Fianna Fail party have been so numerous that he has previously placed on record his assertion that the public are entitled to "an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of ministers". But, the seeming lack of clarity in his evidence may return to haunt him. We must remember that at the time he was Minister of Finance so whether or not there was “cash for favours” there is certainly no appearance of transparency in these strange and undocumented transactions.
However, even if every allegation against him were true – and few really believe all of them – it all pales into insignificance against the low standards set by his predecessor, the late Charles Haughey who, in his time, pocketed 8.4 million in “donations”.
Haughey’s Minister of Justice, Ray Burke, has previously been found culpable of receiving large sums of cash and indeed having his own house and its land “donated” by Brennan and McGowan, developers who benefited from wide scale rezoning of land. Liam Lawlor, another Fianna Fail T.D. (Irish Member of Parliament) was also found to have corruptly benefited from payments from developers who had agricultural land rezoned for development, often at great cost to the public purse in providing the infrastructure.
Even squeaky clean former Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald was found to have a 320,000 pound loan from Allied Irish Bank to invest in the shares of Guinness Peat Aviation (of which he was a director) written off by the bank when the investment went wrong, as you or I would in similar circumstances. Dr. FitzGerald had previously been Prime Minister when the same bank had been bailed out to the tune of 121 million when their investment in the Insurance Corporation of Ireland went wrong.
So there is a worrying trend and history in Irish Politics which the current “imprecision” about Bertie Ahern’s finances is doing nothing to allay. The image of “hang dog” Bertie sitting in a pub wearing his trademark anorak and having “friends” more or less spontaneously organise whip rounds causes me concern.
Why you may ask? Well I often sat in Dublin pubs in my younger days complaining about my unfortunate lot. And here is the worry I have. Were my social skills so poor that my “friends” didn’t get the message or did I choose the wrong “friends”? I may never know the answer and I suspect in pubs tonight up and down the length of Ireland there may be many other Irish people not receiving spontaneous whip rounds of thousands of euros in ready cash who may also be asking themselves serious questions about their social skills and the quality of their “friends”!
Bertie's election banner on the side of Fagan's
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