It’s Bye, Bye Bertie

Ireland Calling with John Spain

It’s Bye, Bye Bertie

April 14, 2008

by John Spain

I’LL say this for Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. He’s a guy who always liked to surprise people, to do the unexpected, to catch everyone on the hop. And that’s exactly what he did early last Wednesday morning when media organizations in Ireland were given just 40 minutes to get themselves down to the steps of Government Buildings at the back of the Dail (Parliament) where they were told Ahern would make “an important announcement.”

As the alert went out, Ahern had just finished telling his ministerial colleagues who had assembled inside for an early morning cabinet meeting. They had no advance warning either, and were as shocked as everyone else.

Yes it was true, Ahern was going. He was naming the day. He was giving himself just a few weeks for a lap of honor before he would resign as taoiseach on May 6.

Last week this column, headlined “Tipping Point for the Taoiseach,” said that he had passed the point of rescue, that recent revelations about his personal finances at the tribunal of inquiry into corruption, trivial though they were, had meant that he had lost the support of much of the public and that people wanted him gone ASAP. But no one, not me or anyone else, thought that it would happen so fast.

Most people thought he would carry on until later this year, or even into next year. I even suggested in this column last week that the downturn in the Irish economy could mean that successor Brian Cowen might prefer to let Ahern carry the can for the backlash that Fianna Fail are going to suffer in the local elections here in the middle of next year.

But Ahern — supreme strategist and loyal Fianna Fail party man that he is — thought otherwise. He decided that the ongoing controversy that was dogging him was too damaging for the party for him to hang in there any longer. He had become a distraction.

The controversy around him might affect the upcoming vote on the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the local elections next year. That could not be risked. Even though he had said he was staying until 2011, it was time to go.

It was time to go before there could be any suggestion inside the party that he had become an embarrassment. It was time to go before there could be any move to push him.

Having reached that conclusion, he announced the decision before either his colleagues in government or the media had fully caught up with his thinking. As usual, he was well ahead of the rest of them.

And so, in the brilliant sunshine outside the Dail last Wednesday morning, flanked by his ministerial colleagues, he addressed the hastily assembled cameras and RTE dramatically interrupted its morning programs to carry his announcement live to the nation.

He went over his achievements, as he was entitled to do. Prosperity in the south. Peace in the North. A long career at the highest level. The affection and loyalty of the voters in his own area in north Dublin and across the country. His historic three terms as taoiseach matched only by de Valera himself.

It is a career with an unprecedented level of achievement unequalled by any of his predecessors, even by the great names of the past.

But it was when he came to his reason for going now, so quickly, that the watching nation seemed to hold its breath. He said that it had become “a matter of real concern to me that the important work of government and party is now being overshadowed by issues relating to me at the tribunal of inquiry.”

“The constant barrage of commentary on tribunal-related matters has, and I believe will continue to dominate the political agenda at an important point for our country. We face uncertain economic times and challenges and we are soon to cast our vote on the Lisbon Treaty.

“The vital interests of Ireland demand that the national dialogue of our political system address these fundamental issues, and not be constantly deflected by the minutiae of my life, my lifestyle and my finances.”

He revealed that because of this he had been thinking of bringing forward his retirement date for some time. “This is solely a personal decision,” he said. “I will not allow issues relating to my own person to dominate the body politic as this would be contrary to the long-term interests of the Irish people.

“I want everyone to understand one truth above all else. Never, in all the time I have served in public life, have I put my personal interest ahead of the public good.

“I have served this country and the people I have the honor to represent in Dail Eireann honestly. I have provided more details about my personal finances than any person in public life who has ever held office. While I will be the first to admit that I have made mistakes in my life and in my career, one mistake I have never made is to enrich myself by misusing the trust of the people.

“I have never received a corrupt payment and I have never done anything to dishonor any office I have held,” he said. “I know in my heart of hearts that I have done no wrong and wronged no one.”

It was powerful stuff and, for most people, it was convincing. Certainly when Ahern says he never took a corrupt payment, I believe him, and so do most people here (excluding the lefty-liberal media commentariat who are all, of course, super-clean themselves).

But as I have said in this column many times before, that is not enough. He did not say that he had not taken any payments, only any corrupt payments.

The fact is that Ahern was accepting dig-outs (presents and loans) from his business pals back in the early 1990s at a time when he was minister for finance and that is simply not acceptable, even if the amounts were small and nothing was done in return for the money.

To understand why he did it, you have to understand the kind of guy Ahern is, the way he was consumed by politics all his adult life and gave so much of his time to it every day, seven days a week. He was married to the voters, which is probably most of the reason why his actual marriage fell apart.

When that happened, St Luke’s, the little house that was his constituency office, became his second home (in fact his only home for a period). And there is no doubt that at that time, after he had left the family home, he was in a financial situation that was uncomfortable, even if it was not as difficult as he now suggests.

Bertie was not well off, even though he was a government minister. Both he and his wife were from pretty ordinary backgrounds on Dublin’s north side (his father was a head gardener) so there was no family money to fall back on.

After he separated and moved out of the family home he stopped using the joint bank account he had with his wife and started cashing his salary check and operating in cash.

He continued like this for a few years around the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and when he did start using bank and building society accounts again his personal finances were a mess, with various unexplained amounts of money being moved in and out.

The total amount, as I have said here before, is chickenfeed. And this is what the tribunal is now trawling through, in search of possible corruption.

They are unlikely to find any. If he was trying to hide something, putting money so openly into bank accounts was hardly a sensible way of going about it.

And the fact is that the money came from businessmen who were small players, friends from the north side of Dublin and Manchester, rather than from the A list of businessmen who are the heavy hitters in the Irish economy and who might have had a real reason to want influence.

It was sloppy and it should not have happened. But it does seem to be that simple.

Making a financial settlement with his wife and buying a house for himself stretched his personal finances and, aware of this, his local business buddies helped out. As far as anyone knows, none of them got anything in return.

To understand why it happened the way it did, you also have to understand that for Ahern, who worked 14 hours a day, the difference between political life and private life was blurred. Money was something that hardly mattered.

Since his commitment was total and everything was for the party and the nation, what money was for could occasionally get blurred as well.

There were no boundaries between Ahern’s personal life and his political life. He was an ordinary Dub who lived a modest lifestyle, with holidays in Kerry, a few pints and lots of football matches.

He remained close to his roots and to the ordinary people of north Dublin who elected him. In a way you could say he was married to them. His own marriage fell apart and he could not bring himself later to marry his partner Celia Larkin because he was already married — to politics.

The revelations at the tribunal that some political money in his constituency office at St. Luke’s may have been used for personal reasons have to be seen in that light — like the loan that Larkin got to help her buy the house her elderly aunts were living in. Or the one or two other small political donations that seem to have ended up in his personal accounts.

The tendency to blur the distinction between party and personal money was not sinister; since Ahern was working 14 hours a day as a politician, who was to say where one stopped and the other began? As far as he and his supporters were concerned, in the end it was all for the cause, and he seems to have paid little attention to the details.

Ahern’s closeness to his roots in north Dublin was clear when he was making his speech. When he mentioned them, it was the only time that he seemed to get emotional.

“I have been elected 10 times in those 31 years by the people of Dublin Central, “ he said. “I want to give special thanks to my constituency organization. They have come with me, through good times and bad times, and for that I am very grateful.”

This rooted quality Ahern has, the total lack of pretension, the good humor and the generosity towards friend and foe, were what made him a unique politician. He was the ultimate consensus politician, always looking for the middle ground and the way to fix things while others were riding away on their high horses.

It was that ordinary quality he had, the ability to talk to heads of state and people on the streets of north Dublin in the same way that made him the most loved politician in the country.

And so Ahern begins his lap of honor over the next few weeks, and he has no reason not to hold his head high. There will be plenty of time over the next few weeks to examine in detail the huge contribution he made, summarized too glibly under the heading Peace and Prosperity. That contribution was enormous, and in time it will get the full recognition it deserves.

Was he corrupt? Of course not. And because of that he did not deserve to be hounded so much that he had to leave a year or two earlier than he had planned (although he would have been going then anyway to allow Cowen enough time to settle in as taoiseach before the next general election).

But it’s done now. He has taken the decision and he seems happy with it. And he has his big American trip to look forward to in a few weeks which will help.

Make sure you give him an acclamation to remember. He’s earned it.

Share this story: digg this | Add to del.icio.us

Print Save Discussions

Discuss

Email a friend