The Gospel according to Charlie… Chawke, that is

One of the twelve men, dubbed the Twelve Apostles, involved in “helping Bertie Ahern out” with the court costs surrounding his separation from his wife in 1993 is a Limerickman.

Owner of numerous Dublin pubs and a shareholder in Sunderland Football Club, Charlie Chawke, from Adare, County Limerick, was named as one of 12 people who donated between IR£2,500 and IR£5,000 to the whiparound to pay the Taoseach’s legal bills. The entire list can be found here.

And what good is an Apostle without a Gospel to name after him?

Here’s a brief summary of the Gospel according to Charlie, lifted in part, from today’s Irish Independent.

Whilst having a few jars in one of Chawke’s pubs, The Goat Inn, Chawke and his friends were gossiping about poor Bertie and how the court proceedings connected with his separation from his wife Miriam had left him in the poor house. The old light bill needed to be paid, and then there was those solicitors bills. (We didn’t have RateYourSolicitor.com in those days you see, so shopping around for a good affordable solicitor was harder for people in them days than it is for the young pups now.) And the man in charge of the finances of the country was losing control of his own finances.

Indeed, that would have been very embarrasing for a Minister for Finance to be broke, and Chawke and his friends didn’t want to see this happen.

So they decided to have a whip around amongst themselves to raise some funds for their financially strapped friend.

But, the Gospel According to Charlie, says that Bertie initially refused to accept the money totalling €50,000 in today’s money.

He eventually did accept the money on the condition that it was to be a loan, and destined to be paid back with interest, according to Chawke. This hasn’t happened yet. In an interview with RTE’s Brian Dobson, Mr. Ahern admitted that he hasn’t even started to repay his “debt of honour”.

Reading from the Gospel, The Independent reports that neither Chawke nor his friends need the money back or want it back. Why would they? Most of them ended up in plum government or semi-state positions during the lifetime of this government.

“There was some talk that the Taoseach could pay the money back after he retired if he wished”, proclaimed Charlie.