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Ireland Calling with John Spain

The Lame Duck Taoiseach

September 27, 2007

By John Spain

HIS days are numbered. Last week Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern completed his fourth day and over 18 hours of questioning before the planning and political corruption tribunal here. And as the length of time he was being cross-examined grew, his credibility started to crumble. His answers have been increasingly bizarre and unbelievable. The tribunal has made it clear that it is not satisfied with his explanations about several large lumps of money that moved into and out of his bank accounts in 1993 and 1994, one of which may be a mysterious $45,000. He is going to be called back again for a further grilling by the tribunal lawyers.

And in the meantime, this week the Dail (Parliament) resumes after the summer recess and Ahern is facing a possible vote of no confidence as the opposition parties gang up on him.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said Ahern’s answers before the tribunal were unconvincing and accused him of seriously damaging the office of taoiseach. The new Labor leader Eamonn Gilmore called for his resignation.

So Ahern is in trouble. The brave face, the “howayiz lads” for the media, all became increasingly strained last week. He looked like a dead man walking.

For the first time, a section of the crowd outside the tribunal could be heard booing the taoiseach even though the diehard Fianna Fail supporters did their best to drown that out with clapping and cheering. An opinion poll published over the weekend showed that a very large number of people no longer believe Ahern’s explanations about the money.

There is a growing feeling in the air — and that includes the fetid air inside the Fianna Fail tent — that he is damaged goods and the sooner he is gone the better.

Ahern has said already that he will be gone before the end of this new Dail in a maximum of five years. He has even nominated the Minister for Finance Brian Cowen as his preferred successor.

Since he would have to give Cowen enough time to establish his profile as taoiseach before a general election, what this means effectively is that very soon after the local elections in two years time Ahern would head off to a big job in the European Union, vacating the taoiseach’s chair for his anointed successor.

Or that was the theory until last week. Now Ahern’s carefully laid exit plans are beginning to fall apart.

His ministers, the Fianna Fail party and his partners in government, the Greens and the Progressive Democrats, are all sticking with him, conscious of how popular he is in the country and the fact that what could be a damning report from the tribunal is at least two or three years away from completion and publication.

But the problem with this scenario is that it assumes that public opinion will stick with Ahern. Judging the public mood not just by the boos and jeers outside the tribunal last week but by the scathing comments on radio talk shows and in letters to the papers, there are clear signs that this is changing, and changing fast.

Ahern is running out of time. His orderly exit before any tribunal report may not be possible.

The other reason behind shifting public opinion is that Ahern’s greatest achievement, economic prosperity, is also starting to look a bit tattered at the edges. No one here now denies that we are in a serious property slump and that thousands of construction jobs will go in the coming year.

And there are growing signs that our international competitiveness has been so eroded that the loss of manufacturing jobs here will accelerate as multi-nationals, including big American companies, shift to cheaper locations.

It’s not all bad news, of course. There is still some growth in the economy and there are still occasional encouraging developments in the information technology and financial services sectors.

But these tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule these days, and the longer term outlook is worrying. This uncertainty is already in the air and it makes Ahern’s bonhomie irritating rather than reassuring.

People want less of the “howayiz lads” and more straight answers, not just on the economy and where we’re going, but on the questions about Ahern’s personal finances as well. It’s an interlinked trust and confidence issue.

At the same time as revenue is contracting, demand for public services is growing steadily, in health, education and other areas (and that will include welfare if an economic downturn really kicks in).

Which means tough budgets and reduced spending ahead, with the kind of belt-tightening that makes people here less tolerant of Ahern’s bull, his waffling non-answers to questions. The one-of- the-boys act is becoming very tiresome for a lot of people.

Of course Ahern could have put all this stuff to bed a long time ago if he had been more forthcoming in his answers to the tribunal. His problem now is that it appears more and more that he does not have the answers, or at least answers that he can give.

Instead what we have got is a mixture of I can’t remember, it might have been, it might have been something else, it’s all 13 years ago and who can remember that far back anyway?

The answers that he has given involve behavior (like a suitcase full of cash being given to him in his office) that would be bizarre for an ordinary person who is not a drug dealer and is almost beyond belief for someone who was minister for finance at the time. His convoluted and shifting stories about “dig outs” from friends who were helping him through a “turbulent” time in his private life ignores the fact that many people go through marriage separations without having wads of cash given to them.

There is also the awkward fact that the cash movements in question happened several years after Ahern had left the family home, long enough to get his affairs in order and to open a new bank account to replace the joint account he had with his wife.

The fact that there was so much cash involved seems bizarre to most people. Ahern’s explanation is that he did not have a bank account and that he was more comfortable dealing in cash at the time seems odd.

Was he just trying to hide his own money from his ex-wife? Or was he trying to hide money he was getting from other sources?

That is why the tribunal is pursuing Ahern’s money trail. One of the allegations that led to the tribunal being set up in the first place was that Ahern had been given £80,000 by the developer Eoin O’Callaghan, something both of them have strongly denied.

The tribunal has been trawling through Ahern’s bank records looking for unexplained money movements and have identified three lodgments and one withdrawal that require explanation. The three lodgments come to over £80,000 and two of them involved sterling, with perhaps some Irish punts as well.

Ahern’s explanation has to do with his renting and renovating a house which he later bought, something that most people can manage to do without having to make strange looking lodgments and withdrawals in cash.

His explanation about this is just about possible to swallow, if you accept the idea that his marriage breakdown had played havoc with his personal finances. This weekend he told one interviewer that he accepted that it looked strange, but that none of it would ever have happened if his marriage had not broken down.

To be fair to Ahern, the tribunal has crawled all over his bank accounts and financial dealings for quite a few years, and these three or four transactions requiring explanations are all they have come up with. And if they do indicate that Ahern was on the take, he was a very cheap date.

In contrast with former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey, who took millions to fund his delusions of Anglo-Irish grandeur, Ahern is being quizzed by the tribunal about amounts that would have paid Haughey’s bills for only a few months. And in contrast with Haughey, Ahern leads a modest lifestyle and lives in (the same) modest house. There is no sign of accumulated wealth from bribery and corruption.

But the problem for him is that the public perception is growing that the difference between him and Haughey is only one of degree, not of absolute moral standards.

For Fianna Fail, it gives the impression rightly or wrongly that the culture of sleaze is still embedded in the developers’ favorite political party. Instead of a complete break with the Haughey era, Ahern has come to represent a link to that past era of corruption. Already we are hearing the excuse that although he may have taken some money from friends, no favors were ever done in return, which was exactly the Haughey defense.

Ahern will waffle his way through any further tribunal sessions he is asked to attend by relying on his “I don’t remember” stance, and his acceptance that any one of several explanations may be the correct one.

On the likely dollar transaction (the amount of punts and pence credited for one lodgment equated exactly to $45,000 U.S. dollars instead of the sterling/punt mix that Ahern says it was), he has failed to offer any explanation except that he never had large amounts of dollars.

He will waffle on and he will survive ... but the clock is ticking. Fianna Fail has their new hero Brian (“I don’t need anyone to clean me up”) Cowen ready to take over.

And for most of them, the change can’t come soon enough.

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