Bertie

by Colm Keena

  There had been nothing to prevent Ahern contacting the tribunal or the legal team speaking on his behalf so that they could accept that sterling had been lodged and explain where it had come from. Ahern’s legal team did not appear for Carruth’s second day in the witness box. The acceptance that sterling had been lodged to an account that Ahern had said contained income from his political work was a huge blow to his already weakened hold on power. The way Carruth had been left to deal with the controversy on her own was also damaging to him. Miriam Lord laid into Ahern in the Irish Times.

  Bertie Ahern must be a proud man today. His ministers must be so proud of him too. It’s such a pity none of them could make it to Dublin Castle to watch Gráinne Carruth give her evidence.

  Lord wrote about Carruth

  alone and trembling in the witness box, battling back tears as she whispered in tones so anguished they were barely audible: ‘I just want to go home.’ It was so pitiful, it’s just a pity Bertie wasn’t there to see it. He might have stood up and shouted like a man: ‘Let the girl go. It’s me you want!’ But that only happens in the movies.

  Ahern later gave an explanation for the origins of the sterling and so could have short-circuited the whole affair at the outset and saved Carruth from having to give evidence. He chose not to do so and put off his response until the last possible moment. He was clinging by his fingernails to power, and Carruth’s distress was the price that had to be paid.

  The new evidence about sterling required a political response. Mary Harney and the Green Party leader, John Gormley, both said Ahern would have to give an explanation. The Dáil was on holiday and was due to resume on 2 April. On that morning there was a sitting in the High Court in a case in which Ahern had challenged aspects of the tribunal’s work. The sitting was delayed when news broke that Ahern, surrounded by his Government colleagues, was making an unexpected public announcement on the steps of Government Buildings. The barristers, solicitors and journalists who were gathered in Court 6 for the sitting found themselves crowding around an RTE reporter’s mobile phone as she played the live report. Ahern spoke of his life in politics, saying he had always been motivated solely by what was best for the people and had never put his personal interest ahead of the public good. The barrage of commentary about his finances was distracting the Government from its work. ‘I have never received a corrupt payment . . . I have done no wrong and wronged no-one.’ He said he was dealing comprehensively at the tribunal with the issues that had arisen. He announced that he would be standing down as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil on 6 May 2008. This would give him time to take up an invitation to speak to the joint houses of Congress in Washington as well as at other engagements. Power was being wrenched from him, but first he was to have a sort of last hurrah. In the emotions of the moment, no-one pressed him to explain where the sterling had come from.

  Ahern’s last official function was at the newly created Battle of the Boyne Centre in Co. Meath. Paisley attended, and the choice of venue was no doubt a pointer to the importance of developments in Northern Ireland during Ahern’s years as Taoiseach. But it was also fitting in that the centre had been privately investigated by the Mahon Tribunal and others.

  Before the decision to build the centre, Ahern’s friend Tim Collins, acting in his role as land scout, had sourced the site for the McCann family, the controllers of the Fyffes Group. Two years later it was sold to the state at a considerable profit, and Collins made a personal profit from the deal of €600,000. Liam Moran, a solicitor and part-owner of the building firm Walsh Maguire, worked with Collins on the deal. The transaction was scrutinised by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, because the Office of Public Works had bought the company that owned the land, not the land itself, thereby saving the vendors a lot of tax. The Comptroller’s report was later discussed by the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts. The tribunal never held public hearings into the deal.

  After Ahern announced his intention to resign, Stephen Collins in the Irish Times said Ahern had had an outstanding political career, winning three elections in a row, presiding over three harmonious coalitions, the Celtic Tiger and, most importantly, the peace process. He was Fianna Fáil’s most successful electoral leader since Éamon de Valera. However, within weeks of Ahern making way for Brian Cowen the huge difficulties in the economy became apparent. A year later Collins wrote:

  It is becoming clearer by the day that Ahern was probably the worst leader the country ever had and people in all walks of life are now suffering because of his incompetent management of the economy.

  Chapter 10

  THE REAL BERTIE AHERN

  It would be foolish to believe that the public persona of such a successful populist politician as Bertie Ahern was a true or full reflection of what the man was actually like. On the other hand, Ahern during his years in government had such a strong image as an ordinary man of the people, and one who was famously present in the media and in the public arena, that it was easy to believe that his public and his private persona were one and the same. Mary O’Rourke famously remarked that everyone in Ireland had met him.

  The first time the present writer met him was outside a deserted count centre near Sheriff Street, in his constituency, during the 1989 general election. I had long hair and was wearing jeans and runners, standing beside my bicycle. A black Mercedes pulled up, and out got a tousle-haired Minister for Labour, wearing an anorak or car coat. I explained that I was a reporter from the Irish Press, and we discussed the extraordinary level of deprivation that was visible all around us. He spoke fondly of the local constituents and appeared to have all the time in the world to stop and chat. When I got back to the office I told colleagues about the meeting, about what an attractive character he was, entirely lacking in arrogance.

  My first view of a less attractive aspect of his character came when he gave evidence to the Moriarty Tribunal in 1999. In the witness box he gave an impression of barely contained anger. He eyeballed John Coughlan, the tribunal barrister who was questioning him, and my impression was that he filled the large, high-ceilinged room with an air of menace. I thought how I wouldn’t like to meet him in a dark lane at night, and how, if I did, I might just turn and run.

  The tension surrounding his second appearance at the tribunal, in June 2000, followed him out to the castle yard afterwards, where the jostling by the photographers as they sought to get their pictures threatened to turn ugly. Ahern intervened to calm the situation. Ah, lads, lads,’ he said, in his familiar, friendly way, urging everyone to relax. ‘Someone will get hurt.’ He was a completely different person from the one who had appeared in the witness box. The tribunal, of course, did not allow the broadcasting of its proceedings.

  A number of political reporters came to Dublin Castle to watch Ahern give his evidence that day, and I remarked to some of them afterwards that Ahern in the witness box had not been at all like the politician I knew through the media. ‘He’s not a nice man at all,’ one of the political correspondents replied definitively. None of his colleagues demurred. What struck me was how Ahern had so successfully created his powerful public image using the media, while those in the media who had the most dealings with him had a view of him that was entirely at variance with the image they were involved in creating. Of course the wider media, who knew little at all about Ahern, also played a huge role in the creation and enforcement of the view the public had of him. His public persona was not only useful to him: it was also a gift to the media.

  Miriam Lord said she often heard those who worked with Ahern talk about his aggression.

  I always thought that he ‘went home and kicked the cat’ sort of thing. Because you would hear from people who worked with him who’d say they’d be afraid of their lives to cross the boss or who would say to you, ‘Jaysus, don’t do that, the boss will be very upset. [You would write it anyway] and then you would meet the boss and you would be his best friend in the whole wide world. And then after he left office I was amazed at the
amount of people who worked in Government Buildings who didn’t have a good word to say about him. I remember an adviser to one of the ministers saying, ‘But sure you knew what he was like when he was angry,’ and I didn’t know what he was like, but apparently he had them terrorised. Absolutely terrorised. So he was a street angel, house devil, I suspect. It was a mark of the man that he didn’t lose his temper in the Dáil or in public, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a bollocks.

  Gerald Kenny, the party activist who ran a security company, studied psychology for two years in Trinity College in the late 1980s before leaving to study Jungian analysis. In time he began to work as a counsellor and psychotherapist, which is still his profession. He lives in the Dublin Central constituency and remains on friendly terms with Ahern. In his view Ahern, despite his public persona, is a man filled with an unusual level of anger, who has a ‘natural fury’ inside. ‘On one or two occasions, when speaking to loyalists, I have seen him get into a mode of public speaking that was almost demagoguery.’

  Kenny’s view is that Ahern was sincere in his interest in religion. Ahern, he said, would make observations such as ‘We are all only passing through life’ and that in this life we should try to help others. Yet he had another side that was without mercy and devoted to the winning and holding of power. In Kenny’s view, everyone in Fianna Fáil knew that Ahern was ruthless, and everyone was intimidated by him, including the Government.

  For Kenny, Ahern is a shy, retiring man who forced himself to act as the ‘hail, fellow, well met’ character that he presents in public.

  I remember one occasion when I was in charge of finance in the cumann. We used to have chicken-and-chips functions, and we had one up at the Parkside Hotel. Bertie was invited as guest speaker. There were three or four of us sitting at the top, on a slightly elevated stage, and Bertie went out to speak. He had his hands behind his back, and he was sort of wrestling with his fingers behind his back all the way through the speech. From the front he appeared perfectly calm, but from the side I could see his hands in combat. I remember thinking, That’s not just nervousness: that’s interior conflict. I always felt that Bertie was a forced extrovert.

  Royston Brady was unusual among Ahern’s inner circle in that he had fallen out with him and would speak to the media when Ahern was still in power. In the period before Ahern left office, Brady mainly spoke off the record. When the controversy first began about Ahern and his personal finances I made contact with Brady. I found out that he was also speaking to one or two other reporters. Interestingly, he had information he said had come from Dominic Dillane before the tribunal’s inquiries became public knowledge. He shared the information with reporters, off the record, before the issues ever arose at the tribunal. This fits in with his suggestion that Ahern may have engaged Dillane as a constituency official years earlier and have begun disclosing information to him in preparation for inquiries that had not yet materialised. Ahern was once again grooming a third party, who would then be presented as giving independent confirmation of matters about which in fact he had received all his information from him.

  Brady told me at one point that he would not speak on the record, because he ‘still had to work in this town.’ As Brady saw it, Ahern and the Drumcondra Mafia had taken over the Fianna Fáil operation in Drumcondra, had then taken over Fianna Fáil itself, and now, with Ahern in the Department of the Taoiseach, had control of the country. ‘They’re not going to give it up easily,’ he said, and he added that Ahern couldn’t believe he had got control of the party. It was only when Ahern was gone from office that Brady began to speak on the record.

  This view of Ahern taking control of Dublin Central from the party is shared by the long-time party activist Joe Tierney, who says that Ahern was ‘no more a Fianna Fáil man than the man on the moon.’ People appeared at the tribunal to discuss matters relating to the constituency whom he had never heard of, even though he was immersed in the constituency organisation all his life. He said the annual dinners in Kilmainham had nothing to do with Fianna Fáil in the constituency.

  It was obvious to anyone who considered the matter that Ahern had to be a tough character to become leader of Fianna Fáil, though it was an aspect of his character that he mostly kept out of public view. By contrast, his attitude towards money was entirely hidden. Ahern created an image of a man who was unusual in his lack of interest in personal wealth. According to Brady, nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Ahern would sometimes bed down in the apartment upstairs in St Luke’s before getting the house in Beresford Avenue. According to Brady, it was not without its luxuries.

  Ahern was the first person I’d ever seen with underfloor heating in the bathroom—for a man who said he had humble tastes! He said, ‘Take your shoes off and feel it.’ A man who liked to give the view that he sleeps on the couch with an anorak on.

  According to Brady, Ahern was very interested in money, and very tight with money. ‘I would describe him as being borderline eccentric when it comes to money and stuff like that.’ St Luke’s was packed with gewgaws that Ahern had been given when performing official functions over the years. A friend of Brady’s once pocketed one, and there was consternation until it was returned.

  I remember another incident on St Patrick’s Day. There were four of us: myself, Dominic Dillane [and two other supporters]. We went to the Brian Boru [a pub near Phibsborough] . . . We went in, and I just said, ‘What are you having?’ and he [Ahern] said, ‘No, I’ll stay on my own.’ So I brought drink for the three lads, and he bought his own drink. We had four drinks. So it would have been the sensible thing to do to buy a round each. But he bought himself the individual drink on each of the four occasions. So I just said to myself, coming away, I said to the lads—because we went into town and had a good few drinks, and he went off—I remember saying to the lads, ‘Did you ever meet such a miserable bastard in all your life?’ Here he is, the Taoiseach of the country, and you think he would have said—lookit, all the work we do, knocking on doors—that he would buy us a few drinks, but not a chance. It’s examples like that you remember.

  Ahern’s long-time associate Paddy Duffy does not necessarily disagree with Brady’s claim that Ahern was slow to put his hand in his pocket. He said it was something they’d noticed about Charles Haughey, who would never have any money in his pockets. As time went on, Bertie became a little like that as well. ‘A bit of tapping the pocket, though he was obviously well known for buying his pint as well.’ His view on Ahern’s interest in his personal finances is that Ahern would have known about his own financial situation ‘down to the last dot’ at all times. It would be the same in most aspects of his life, he said. ‘He is a man of great precision, and particularly in regard to statistics.’

  It became clear during Ahern’s evidence to the Mahon Tribunal that he had a keen interest in his own money. At times it was the tone he used, for instance when referring to not wanting to see his savings being exhausted by paying the legal bills that arose from his separation from his wife. Some observers wondered if Ahern had an interest in money that was similar to that of the disgraced former Assistant City and County Manager, George Redmond, who famously hoarded his money in his garage in boxes.

  In September 2007 the Review Group on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector issued a report that included a recommendation that the Taoiseach’s salary be increased by 14 per cent, to €310,000 from €271,882. However, in December the Government decided that it would defer the implementation of the recommended increases for ministers and the Taoiseach. When Ahern resigned as Taoiseach he became entitled to an annual pension of €111,235.20. As the economic crisis gathered momentum it was decided that serving deputies who were receiving ministerial pensions should accept a cut of 25 per cent. Then, later again, Ahern agreed to forgo his pension while he was a serving TD. In December 2010 he announced that he would not be standing in the 2011 general election. Had he not made the announcement until February 2011, his pension e
ntitlements would have been considerably less. In the event, his combined ministerial and TD pension entitlements came to approximately €135,000 per annum, or almost €2,600 per week.

  Ahern was paid in the region of £300,000 for his memoirs—money he earned tax-free because he made a successful application under the artists’ exemption scheme, this despite the fact that he had the assistance of a ghost writer. (The book did not sell as well as expected, and the publishers, Hutchinson, are believed to have lost heavily.) After his retirement as Taoiseach, Ahern earned an unknown amount from paid speaking engagements at which his fee was of the order of $50,000 per event, and the cost included first-class flights, accommodation in a top hotel and all expenses. It is standard for famous politicians—especially ones involved in historic events, such as the Belfast Agreement—to earn money in this way. However, Ahern did not get the number of company directorships that might have been expected, and one senior figure in the Dublin business world expressed the view privately to the present writer that companies did not want to be associated with him, pending the outcome of the Mahon Tribunal. In this way, Ahern’s engagement with the tribunal not only brought about an end earlier than planned to his career but also hit him hard in the pocket.