Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

During a discussion back in 2002, John Gormley certainly didn’t hold any punches when it came to a sum of £30k and a Taoiseach who misled the Dail. Ah, how times change. I guess Gormley would now say “That was then and this is now.”

Tánaiste accuses FG of witch-hunt

Judge Mahon.  What sounds like an incredible day at the Tribunal is unfolding.  Bertie’s strategy of alternating between seeming cooperation with the Tribunal while letting Conor Maguire level the accusations has finally drawn the Judge out of his cautious mode.  With the phrase “political donation for personal use” destined to enter the political lexicon (and [...]

Bertie Ahern has so far avoided “pleading the 5th” at Mahon today.   But he hasn’t needed to, being able to draw on a host of undocumented intra-family transfers and yet more dead people in order to be vague about where the money was coming from.  Today’s it’s the £10,000 in the Irish Permanent, consisting of [...]

Surprising and yet not surprising, although there was a hint in the government’s refusal to take FG’s Mahon motion a couple of weeks ago.  Apparently at issue: his seemingly troublesome statement to the Dail that his tax affairs were in order, advice he received from a financial expert, and documentation for Mahon questions to him [...]

During the course of his employment [...], his financial remuneration was not sufficient to meet his immediate financial requirements, and he experienced financial difficulties. He said he received assistance from his friends [...], in the form of loans. There was no formal structure to these loans. There was no interest charge, nor was there any [...]

The Mahon Tribunal has already conclusively established that there were mysterious dollar donations sloshing around the upper reaches of the Fianna Fail party in 1994 and in close proximity to then Minister of Finance Bertie Ahern at the same time that the American firm Ogden was backing a proposal by businessman Norman Turner to build [...]

I finally got my hands on it. I had trouble finding it anywhere on the internet, so someone may have already beaten me to it.
Anyways here it is. Pee Flynn destroying his political career in one interview. The quality is not the best as it was recorded on VHS nine years ago, but it is [...]

At the risk of moving Cian’s much more interesting post a little down the screen, it’s perhaps worth noting that the resignation of Peter Hain from Gordon Brown’s Cabinet raises yet again the very different standards for resignation in the UK and Ireland.   Hain, who clearly botched the management of donations to his failed campaign [...]

Frank Dunlop won’t tell the Mahon tribunal which person, then seeking a High Court appointment and who subsequently got it, met him in February 2000. Here’s the complete list of current justices, although in principle someone could have cycled in and out of the job during the interval and not be on this list. [...]

Briefly, Enda releases a statment calling on Cowen to act on Bertie if he refuses to step aside and they reply against his ‘increasingly personal’ attacks. Both statements below the fold.

Bertie’s tax affairs regarding the dig-outs are back in issue.  One reason he needed the dig-outs to be loans is that they wouldn’t be taxable income (although I also vaguely recall a claim that the Manchester nixer wasn’t taxable because it was received outside the Republic).  But anyway, the Irish Mail on Sunday (which really [...]

Clearly Bertie Ahern’s philosophy at Mahon today, deciding to build on what he perceives as a good day yesterday with his “none of your damn business” retort to questions about his separation arrangements.  Two Three bits of actual news so far, below [updated].

Bertie Ahern today at Mahon: Mr Ahern said he was “some fella” if counsel’s theory was true. The theory being that Bertie arranged a £19,115.97 loan from AIB before Christmas 1993 backed by a cash infusion that he knew was coming — the “surprise” legal expenses dig-out, arranged on St Stephen’s Day and delivered [...]

One of the mysteries of Bertie’s dig-outs is the way cash was mobilised from people of relatively modest means.  Consider Paddy Reilly, not the Plasterer.  A contributor to the Christmas legal expenses dig-out to the tune of £2,500.  He had a butcher’s shop.  He’s dead.  So now is his wife, Ellen.  Things were apparently sufficiently [...]

Not much to do but offer a quick outline of another mind-boggling day at Mahon. The 2nd dig-out in September 1994 came while Bertie Ahern had the use of an apartment at St Luke’s, a ministerial salary, and had savings in AIB and the Irish Permanent Building society totalling more than £70,000 (add: Gavin says [...]