Banking Inquiry: The lows and lows of Ireland’s last socialist, Bertie Ahern
He has promoted a Nigerian business investment opportunity, pocketed a fortune to hide in a cupboard, attracted the attention of a no-nonsense tribunal ruling, panicked his party by pondering a presidential bid, and even been caught up in a short-lived expenses storm.
For someone said to have kept firmly out of the public eye in recent years, ousted ex-taoiseach Bertie Ahern has led a far from uneventful life since being forced from power in May 2008 and from politics completely in 2011.
In the wake of a brewing Mahon Tribunal scandal which saw him infamously shed a tear during a September 26, 2006, RTÉ News interview, the former Dublin Central TD resigned as Taoiseach just as the economy was toppling over the fiscal cliff in April 2008 before being replaced by Brian Cowen the following month.
Over the next three years as a TD the former Fianna Fáil leader made sparse public appearances, with his only Dáil speech taking place days before the February 2011 general election, when he spoke about the late Independent TD John Gregory’s work for inner city Dublin communities.
However, that did not mean he was entirely out of the limelight, with a bizarre TV advert for his News of the World column in autumn 2010 showing the former head of government hiding in a kitchen cabinet dishing out football predictions and meekly saying: “I never thought I’d end up here.”
After choosing not to contest the Dáil seat he held in February 2011, Mr Ahern appeared to have finally exited stage left.
However, he was soon back on the political agenda when then Labour TD Anne Ferris obtained figures showing he had claimed more than €377,000 in expenses since resigning as Taoiseach three years before. The revelation, which included €366,000 to employ secretarial assistants from May 2008 and February 2011 and €10,655 in mobile phone costs and €5,682 in VIP airport costs, led to uproar.
In response, the Fine Gael-Labour government decided to scrap expenses for all former taoisigh, hoping to resolve the issue. However, it emerged later that same year that despite the move Mr Ahern had continued to receive expenses for three months after the decision.
In autumn 2011, he courted more negative publicity when his family paid for a glitzy 60th birthday party at his “spiritual home” in Croke Park just as Ireland was facing a bailout.
At the same time, Mr Ahern — who still has a profile on the party’s website despite no longer being a member — openly hinted at his interest in running as a presidential candidate, a suggestion that was quickly and definitively shot down by his replacement as party leader, Micheál Martin.
The acres of bad press Mr Ahern had received since the crash was reason enough for the de facto veto, and why the party instead thought a better option would be to run no candidate at all although it was happy to cosy up to Independent businessman Seán Gallagher, who himself is no stranger to the party.
However, if another reason for shooting down Mr Ahern’s Áras hopes was needed, it soon came into view. On March 22, 2012, Mr Ahern was the subject of a no-holds barred Mahon Tribunal ruling. In a conclusion that has come to define Mr Ahern in his detractors’ eyes, the investigation said he did not truthfully account for IR£165,000 in payments connected to him — an issue that had dogged the latter years of his tenure in office.
“Much of the explanations provided by Ahern, as to the source of the substantial funds available to him, were deemed by the tribunal to be ‘untrue’,” it found. The tribunal said it rejected the former Taoiseach’s evidence on how large quantities of money ended up in his and related bank accounts.
While giving evidence to the tribunal as Taoiseach the former TD had, among other explanations, said some of the funds had come from the proceeds of bets on a now-dead horse whose race certificate and equestrian passport was never located. He had said other funds came from a whip-around from friends during his divorce in the 1990s. The controversial conclusion led to his decision to resign days later from Fianna Fáil before an internal party motion could be heard on whether to expel him, bringing to an end a lifelong association with the organisation.
However, while the situation may have silenced some, Ahern and his finances were yet again soon back in the headlines just days later, when in late March 2012 it emerged he was involved in an eyebrow- raising investment opportunity in Nigeria.
For speaking on the opening day of the Ogun State Investors’ Forum in Lagos, Mr Ahern received €30,000 via the Washington Speakers Bureau to explain how he “transformed Ireland from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the wealthiest”.
The US organisation and the UK-based Speakers Associates soon decided to remove his name from a list of its future debaters on how to help countries get rich, and quick.
The group organised 16 speeches for him in 2009, seeing Mr Ahern get an extra €467,000 from the circuit while still a TD. Asked why, a spokesperson for the latter group said the decision was taken after “lots of people” advised it was not a good idea to continue the relationship.
In 2012 Mr Ahern reversed his decision to give part of his pension back to the exchequer. He had once claimed he was one of the last socialists in Ireland.
Soon he was back in the spotlight after he was assaulted during a retirement party at the Sean O’Casey pub near O’Connell Street in Dublin city centre.
His attacker, who hit him with a crutch and shouted abuse, was arrested.
In a 2009 interview with VIP magazine Mr Ahern said he “can’t understand” people who “are always bitching, saying ‘it’s the government’s fault, it’s the doctor’s fault, it’s the cat’s fault’. It’s everybody’s fault except their own”.
In December 2010, weeks after the bailout, he told his then party cumann: “Nobody advised me, no economist, all those people no writing books saying ‘I told you so’. None of them.”
In an RTÉ interview on his last day in the Dáil in 2011, Mr Ahern again referenced “the banks” as one of his big regrets in office, but added: “I would love if somebody somewhere would have told me what was going on in the banks, but nobody did,” he said.
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