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As Bertie Ahern Fades from Memory, the Sums Get Bigger
Read more about: Bertie Ahern Resigns, Corruption, Fianna Fail, Tribunals 
Today its up to a once-off £30,000 which the Tribunal put to Ahern he received from developer Owen O Callaghan after a March 1994 meeting about the tax status of Quarryvale and Blanchardstown shopping centres. When he looks around at the empty press gallery and reads headlines of economic woe, he must think it was a job well done getting out of dodge.
The essence of Bertie Ahern’s charisma was that he was one of the people, a Dub, with no pretensions to the Squiredom of Don Charleone, of Abbeville.
You could meet him in the local in Drumcondra, having a pint – not Irish Guinness, mind you – but imported Bass, from the Auld Enemy.
He was loved by ordinary working class folk, by the leaders of the trade unions – and their members. He was the one who pressed the flesh everywhere he went – in his A320 Mercedes Benz – a cheery smile and a merry quip for the proletariat.
In the Fianna Fail tent, at the Galway Races, he was De Man – pressing more flesh. But, on these annual junkets they were not the trade union members, but their employers, in the Building Industry; Developers; Stockbrokers; Bookies; PR Fixers; Bloodstock Owners – all millionaires – eager to pass brown envelopes to secure preferential treatments; ease planning for their massive developments; secure Government contracts, at vast commissions.
When he journeyed abroad, abrogating the role of his own Minister of Foreign Affairs, did he have to face the traffic jams en-route to Collinstown Airport? Queue for a security check?
Bollocks!
There was the helicopter to Baldonnel and the Gulf Stream to whisk him, and his bloated entourage, sometimes including his mistress, to various foreign, often exotic, locations, all expenses paid by the Irish taxpayer, there to press more flesh, smile the famous smile & quip the merry quips.
Now Alan Mahon & Des O’Neill have the temerity to suggest that this paragon of virtue; this honest, humble man of the people – is a liar – and, perhaps, another Pickpocket, like his predecessor and mentor!
Another Haughey; not in bespoke suits by Joseph Monaghan at €800 a pop – or Charvet Shirts, equally expensive – but a simple man in a simple anorak.
However, the anorak had to be dumped to allow for Celia’s major make-over; the €400 a week haircut; pancake make-up and facials.
Bertie Ahern is a figment of the imagination of his Minders; stories of his modest lifestyle planted strategically in the media. Pay no attention to selling his daughters wedding to Goodbye Magazine. Sure wasn’t it what any Prime Minister in any Third World country would do for his daughter? A few quid to pay for the honeymoon.
Remember him saying that he never had a bank account?
Perhaps he forgot that he had opened one!
He forgets an awful lot; this Born Again Socialist; Friend of CORI and Healy’s Comparative Poverty Party; Man of The People; Friend of the underdog; Hater of anyone trying to enrich themselves by attempting an MBO at Aer Lingus.
Bertie Ahern, single handed, with his crass stupidity, has plunged this, once rich, country into the abyss. He failed, completely, to take heed of the advice he was being given about the impending collapse of the building industry; the dangers of the impending sub-prime lending in the USA and Ireland’s dependence on inward investment from that country.
(Some of you out there may remember my paper “Whither Apathy”, sent to his advisors & posted on this Blog site?).
Instead he kept trying to buy the upcoming General Election, ordering Brian Cowen to bring in a wasteful Budget – with increased payouts to public sector employees; wasteful social spending – and nothing put aside for the stormy days – and, possibly, years – ahead.
When he paid tribute to Charlie Haughey, as a great leader, one can only wonder if he was deluded.
Or maybe he was hoping that, one day, some other, poor, deluded Fianna Fail Leader might get up in a church, in Drumcondra, to recall the once Greatness of Bertie Ahern, Man of de People…
And Scrounger.
One thing you have to say about Bertie is that he has done the state some service. They know it but no more of that.
Yes, indeed.
When he was told by wiser heads that he was bringing the country into disrepute, like so many of his Fianna Fail crooked predecessors, he bowed to the inevitable and was summarily booted out.
And he had the good sense to leave immediately, hoping he might get a fat cat job in the EU.
He is wrong and may yet do chokey; but, in leaving office, he did the State a big service.