A lot of Dung, More Doo-Doo

Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

I bought the Sindo, something I’d promised myself I’d never do for reasons that I hope are obvious.

Now to be fair, there were mitigating circumstances. After all, they had an exclusive interview with one Bartholomew Ahern, leader of this fair nation, regarding certain strange favours received by the former Minister for Finance during the early nineties.

This should have been a dream interview for any journalist, but not since Carol Coleman’s chat with George Bush Junior have I felt so disappointed. To be fair to Jody Corcoran, the she asks many of the questions that needed to be asked, but she tolerates Bertie’s bumbling excuses in a way that somebody like Vincent Browne would not.

For instance, examine the following:

Sunday Independent: Why did you keep that 19,000 pounds as a loan when you also had savings in the same bank in O’Connell Street which would have paid off the debt?

Bertie: I did not pay off the bank loan immediately but I did use the money my friends loaned me to pay off that load at a later date.

Sunday Independent: Why exactly did you not being to repay your 19,000 pound loan for 18 months when you had ample funds to repay immediately?

Bertie: This was because my circumstances were still unsettled and it took a period of time before matters had been resolved. I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with taking some time to pay back that load.

I’m sorry Bertie, but that’s not an answer. It is a refusal to answer the pressing question. The fact is that the Taoiseach’s account of events are implausible. There is nothing wrong with delaying repayment of a loan, but if you offer no explanation for this failure, then that is a gaping hole in your story, and to their shame, the Sindo fail to press Ahern on the issue.

Personally, I’ve made up my mind already. Bertie is evading something. His story doesn’t add up. If you’re poor, if you’re in financial difficulty, if you are homeless, you don’t head over to Manchester every weekend to watch Manchester United play! If you receive a loan from friends, and you don’t need that cash, you explain that to them and you pay them back. Otherwise, you’re not a particularly good friend. Why on earth would you be interested in purchasing a house that needed such extensive renovations a couple years after it was built?
If you’ve nothing to hide, then you don’t run away from the press, especially in the middle of a general election campaign!

Anyway, I’ll stop typing soon. I feel dirty and need to take a shower. My advice to anybody emulated my sin is to do the same, But not before reading Gene Kerrigan’s article on the final page of the rag in question.

Kerrigan takes the Irish people to task for the apathy they have displayed toward the whole Bertigate affair. He writes:

If it’s true that you’re bored, we can’t help that. A primary part of the media’s job is to report on significant events. And when 170,000 makes its way into a major politician’s pocket – well, it kind of meets the definition of significant…

The third reason the media should shut up about the 170,000 is, we’re told – we should concentrate on “the issues”. Well, look around. The newspapers bristle with wearying but balanced articles about “the issues”. Radio and TV, too…

The “issues”, of course, are largely phoney. All week, in contending announcements, the likes of Seamus Brennan and Brian Hayes argued in exquisite detail about precisely how many gardai or hospital beds their respective parties are promising. Each could produce figures that depending on how you look at them, may back their conflicting claims.

Such posturing allegedly deals with the “issues” of crime and health. There are no contending views – no views at all – on the changing nature of crime and how that can be influenced. Anyone reducing the problem to arguing about garda numbers is dodging the issue of a drug abusing society outsourcing its needs to a criminal under-class.

Why Kerrigan remains at the Sindo is a mystery. Would some other publication please give the man a better home for his output?

Anyway, in this particular case, he is both right and wrong. The Bertiegate affair is a serious problem and it deserves more than yawns, but it’s time to stop acting like forensic accountants, accept that Bertie is a liar, and move on to discussing the “issues” at a serious level. We need people to start attacking the policy proposals of the various because they fail to address the “issues” properly, and this could be done more effectively if the column inches and radio-waves were not saturated with talk of Bertie’s finances.