Bertie’s best friend: Time

Is there a curse of Mahon? Added to the list of deceased on the witness lists comes today’s announcement that Albert Reynolds has “cognitive impairment” and cannot give evidence to the Tribunal. Albert has had a strange twilight to political career, having inadvertedly given his name to the standard libel defence in English law while seeing his contributions to the Northern Ireland peace process eclipsed by the post-Good Friday era. And he is surely a key player in the underlying Mahon chronology, since it was his downfall as Taoiseach that coincided with Bertie’s personal housing deals. He is also at the centre of Tom Gilmartin’s alleged chain linking Owen O’Callaghan to the fuzzy line between political and personal donations to Fianna Fail. But none of this will be heard from the horse’s mouth. What’s left today is O’Callaghan’s chaotic account of competing stadium proposals, in which Bertie was apparently fixated on a northside stadium but leaving O’Callaghan with the impression that his mind was still open. It gets more and more curious but it’s not clear that many people are paying attention.