Bertie: Re-Viewed
Bertie Ahern left office exactly a year ago last Wednesday. In the intervening 12 months, the Celtic Tiger society he boasted of has collapsed spectacularly. How do we see him now?
Justine McCarthy spoke to those he crossed paths with
Eamon Dunphy, Commentator
Royston Brady, Former Election Candidate
Maurice Ahern, The Brother of Bertie
Willie Corduff, Co Mayo Protestor
Mandy Johnston, Ahern's Former Government Press Secretary
Liz O' Donnell, The Minister
Terry Prone PR Consultant
Eamon Dunphy, commentator
When Bertie Ahern knocked European heads together during Ireland's EU presidency to get agreement on a new Constitutional Treaty for Europe, the precursor to the Lisbon treaty, in June 2004, Eamon Dunphy penned a lavish tribute to him in the Daily Mail. By 2007, he had turned against the Taoiseach with a highly critical contribution to a Late Late Show pre-election debate.
"I wrote a very favourable piece when he brokered the EU deal on the constitution, praising his lack of affectation and his skill on the North. It was a pro-Bertie polemic about how he was a practical politician who got things done. I liked his modesty; going to the football and the family stuff. I don't think that was fake. But I think he was deeply cynical about the economy and about politics.
"My opinion of him began to change radically when it became obvious from the Mahon tribunal that he had been taking money. I will say, as I can say about most things in my life, I was wrong.
"Even after I'd given evidence against him at the tribunal he was friendly towards me. (Dunphy testified in February 2008 that developer Owen O'Callaghan had told him Ahern had been "taken care of" in relation to the building of a shopping centre in Athlone.) I met him on the Late Late Show special on the GAA and there wasn't a bother on him. Other guys would head-butt you.
"In the past 12 months, it's become clear they effectively bought three elections by inflating the property bubble. His legacy will take account of the Good Friday Agreement and that was an extraordinary feat but what people will remember him for is his cynicism in buying elections and his corrupt behaviour with property developers. That picture of him in the Dáil on budget day was sad. He looked diminished by the absence of power. He has no chance of the presidency now. I think the anger people are feeling is in part directed towards him. I don't think there's a comeback for Bertie."
Royston Brady, former election candidate
As Fianna Fáil candidate for the European parliament election in 2004, then lord mayor of Dublin, Royston Brady was accused of exploiting the 1974 Dublin bombings by fabricating a story that his late father, Ray Brady, had been abducted and taken at gunpoint to the Dublin mountains the day before the bombs exploded. The story was subsequently proven to be true but too late to save Brady's election campaign.
"My first memory of Ahern was in 72 Amiens Street, the party's original constituency office where my dad used to usher people in and out of Bertie's clinics. You'd have 30 or 40 people coming down to see him on a Saturday morning. He'd sit there all morning long. He had time for everyone, young or old. It's probably what sucked me in in the first place.
"The constituency organisation was extremely well-funded. It was a ruthless operation. There was a certain element there that had their own agenda to enhance their standing and well-being.
"In 2004, we were on course for two seats in Europe with Eoin Ryan and me. I'd been approached to run and was told the party would look after the finances and I'd just be the candidate.
"As it turned out there were bills that went unpaid during the campaign. Whatever about being hung out to dry financially, Dad had been with Ahern for over 20 years. I would have thought he'd have some loyalty. He knew the incident had happened in the Dublin mountains but he kept silent all along while I was being savaged in the media.
"I held him in great admiration. I really believed he was one of those politicians who only come along once in a lifetime. Now I think his politics were very shallow. The founding fathers of the state would turn in their graves if they knew how much money we squandered and how much was thrown at the masses to keep the party going."
Mandy Johnston, Ahern's former government press secretary
Johnston was working in the press section of the Football Association of Ireland when she applied for a job with Fianna Fáil. She made history when Ahern appointed her as the first woman government press secretary after the 2002 general election.
"I met him for the first time in February 1995 when I went for a job interview. He had just become leader of the opposition after the Fianna Fáil-Labour government fell in November 1994.
"I was very young. I wasn't involved in politics. I'd only ever seen him on television as Minister for Finance. We were all brought together to form a new team – people like Gerry Howlin, Jackie Gallagher and myself. Fianna Fáil were shell-shocked after being thrown out of government. Bertie did something very clever. He set a goal. Our job was to aim for the next general election. He always set goals so that you always knew what you were working towards.
"Mid-way through the second term of government, you would have known as a member of his team that the goal was to achieve the three-in-a-row. I think the significance of that achievement has been under-estimated.
"The 2007 campaign was so fractured vis-a-vis the tribunal that about three or four days out from the end it didn't look possible. I think surpassing Dev's record was important to him too, but in a personal way.
"In my five years as press secretary there were times when I had to go to him with difficult questions from journalists, sometimes things journalists themselves wouldn't have wanted to put to him directly. He never made me feel I was doing anything other than my job. He would never shout. I never heard him raise his voice. Some of the questions were very personal, to do with his separation and his family.
"When he went to Washington at the end, it was a celebration. He was always very impressive internationally. He built up very solid relationships with other world leaders. It wasn't hard to convince Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and George Mitchell to contribute to the party-political broadcast in the last campaign. "
Liz O'Donnell, the minister
O'Donnell was the junior minister in the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Fianna Fáil-PD coalition. She became PD president when Michael McDowell took over the leadership in 2006 and lost her Dublin South seat a year later when the PDs were obliterated.
"I worked closely with him on the North. He was always very understated. That was his way of doing things. It's very difficult to have a falling out with him.
"With people as diverse as John Taylor, Martin McGuinness and David Trimble, he always managed to broker some accommodation. I never saw him lose his cool during the peace talks. He has that capacity not to be riz, as they say.
"When Blair and himself came to power at the same time, one of his great ambitions was to reach an arrangement on the North. He came from a patriotic, nationalistic family and he did have a sense of the closure of history.
"He didn't talk in any personal way about his feelings on the North. He would talk forever about football and hurling and the Dubs. My father hurled for Dublin. He knew that and he'd always talk to me about him.
"He was very supportive of me at the cabinet on the [overseas] aid programme. I'd say his motivation was that he's a very kind person. I think it goes back to his Christianity. I remember being in the White House for St Patrick's Day and for talks with Clinton on the North and arrangements would have to be made for the Taoiseach to go to mass. I think he's genuinely devout.
"When he resigned it was in his own best interest because the pressure he was under made it unsustainable, but until the tribunal report comes out I will give him the benefit of the doubt."
Terry Prone, PR consultant
Under Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fáil wiped the floor with its political rivals in the PR battle, coining the slogan "A Lot Done, More to Do" for the 2002 general election and featuring tributes from Tony Blair and George Mitchell in its party broadcast for the 2007 election. Prone worked closely with him as a PR adviser.
"I remember sitting in St Luke's waiting for a meeting with him and noticing the gardening books. I asked him when he came in who owned the books. He said he did. He was propagating bonsai trees at the time. I remember saying: 'You should talk about this in public' and it took about two years before he appeared on the Late Late Show talking about his hanging baskets.
"He's a history buff. You'd say something was like the siege of Stalingrad and he'd say no, it was more like Berlin.
"He's got a photographic memory too. He could quote you back word for word something you'd said in a fax two years earlier.
"He always ended up talking about you. You didn't ever talk to him about him. It was either about you or a third party like a book or a plant or a policy or an ardfheis.
"He had amazingly well-cared-for hands with unusually long fingernails for a man.
"He was really always good-humoured. If you asked him to open something or attend something, he was endlessly agreeable and would stay for photographs with everyone. He particularly loved little auld ones. They gave him stick and he gave it back.
"He was incredibly professional; always on time and with a script in his hands. He was never a great orator or a devastating wit. In TV debates, he tended to flummox rather than enlighten.
"He had a thing in common with Gay Byrne. Gay had an almost intravenous feel for what the plain people of Ireland thought. Bertie had the same thing.
"When Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte and, later, Eamon Gilmore were predicting disaster, the plain people were not there yet and they almost turned against the opposition for saying it.
"He was uniquely suited to the time. When it came time to jettison the Haughey era and aura, he did that.
"When he decided it was time to focus on construction, he did that. The question mark over his legacy was his inability to cut loose from certain of his close friends and colleagues."
The Thumbs Up - Maurice Ahern, the brother
The eldest of the three elected Ahern brothers, Maurice Ahern is a Fianna Fáil councillor in Dublin Central. On the first anniversary of his brother's exit as Taoiseach, he won the party nomination for the
5 June by-election in the constituency.
"I said at my mother's funeral that her proudest moment was seeing Bertie's name up on the post in Drumcondra in 1977 when he took the second seat. When Haughey got in as party leader in 1979, he made Bertie assistant chief whip. Quietly, he worked away. It was said in the papers he was Charlie's gofer.
"The proudest moment for me was when he won the leadership of the party. He'd come close in 1992. Christy Wall did the sums then. We had a victory by one vote but we decided he wouldn't dare go for it. In '94 when the chance came round again Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was revving it up. Then Mary O'Rourke came out in favour of Bertie. I remember going in to the Department of Finance the day of the vote. Half the family must have been in my car. We went to the Burlington for the press conference and Bertie said: 'Jaysus, what am I going to say? I've no script.' I said remember what's inscribed on centre court in Wimbledon, that line from Kipling – 'If you have met with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters the same...' I can't remember whether he said it at the start or in the middle of his speech, but he said it.
"He's never talked to me about going for the presidency. If I mention it, he laughs. I think he's waiting for the report of the tribunal. If it says what we expect – there was no evidence of corruption, just strange use of money – I think he'd run for it. But that's just me speculating. He won't talk about it."
The Thumbs Down - Willie Corduff, Co Mayo protestor
After refusing access to their land to lay a gas pipeline from the Corrib field in the Atlantic to a planned Shell oil refinery at Bellanaboy, Willie Corduff and four of his neighbours were jailed in Mountjoy prison in June 2005. They were released after 94 days. In 2007, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots environmental activism.
"The way I look at it is Bertie Ahern destroyed the country and ran away then. We had been Fianna Fáil all our lives – my father, my grandfathers, you name it. I'm absolutely ashamed to think that we supported those people to do what they have done to us. It's a sad, sad situation. I was a person who obeyed the law. I was never in a courthouse until Shell brought me there.
"What Bertie Ahern did to us was terrible. We were treated okay in jail, but it was still jail. I was never away from my family before. We were locked away for 18 hours a day with all sorts of people. It was scary for us and I blame Bertie Ahern. He should have intervened at that stage. He was contacted while we were in jail but to no avail. He came down one time on a visit to Mayo and did a runner. He was supposed to come to Bellanaboy. The people had lined the road waiting for him but he took a different road.
"Eamon Ryan and the Green Party used to protest with us but when they got into government that changed completely. I'm convinced that's why Bertie brought them into government with him."
May 10, 2009
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BERTIE AHERN RUINED THIS GREAT COUNTRY.HE DID IT THRO, QUANGOS JOBS FOR THE BOYS, NEPOTISM, AND THEN THE TRIBUNALS. FOR A GUY THAT GOES TO MASS,
HIS EVIDENCE TO THE TRIBUNALS LEAVES A LOT TO BE DESIRED. WE BADLY NEED A REVOLUTION.