Specs For Rex By Yasmeen Ismail (Bloomsbury; €8.30).

BERTIE AHERN has had enough of questions about blank cheques.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern’s habit of signing blank cheques for Charles Haughey “undoubtedly facilitated the misuse” of taxpayer funds by the late party leader, according to the first report of the Moriarty Tribunal.

POLITICAL and business leaders joined members of Charles Haughey’s family yesterday in a requiem Mass for the former Taoiseach at Our Lady of Consolation Church in Donnycarney.

SOME people have been suggesting that Catherine Butler’s interview in The Village magazine is a Fianna Fáil attempt to rehabilitate Charles Haughey, but publisher Vincent Brown has more reason than anyone to realise that the role played by Fine Gael and Labour in the telephone tapping was the height of hypocrisy.