As poll shows slump, Bertie turns to Europe for comfort and praise

THIS nation of begrudgers may not appreciate Bertie Ahern's talents, but the Europeans are falling over themselves in awe at our Taoiseach.

Despite falling out of favour with half the people who loved him before the general election, the International Man of Mystery revealed yesterday he's still the envy of the French and the Germans.

Doubtless the star-struck continentals displayed impressive knowledge of the Irish economic performance in recent encounters with their idol, according to Mr Ahern.

"I do also have to get the message out there that this country is doing very well. I listened when meeting Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder recently and they look at me, and both of them with unemployment over 10%, both of them getting no investment from the US, and they say: 'You know, here you are with low interest rates, now you're pulling your inflation back, you've more people working, you've 1.8 million - 20,000 people short of 1.8 million. Extraordinary figures from a small country.' But anyway people are demanding and people expect you to be up at the top of all of this," he said.

After seeing his personal satisfaction rating sliding to just 37% in the latest opinion poll, (about half the pre-election figure), and the Government's popularity plummeting to 25%, (the lowest of any administration in a decade), Mr Ahern denied he was a liability to his party.

"No I don't think I am. When I was on 80%, Fianna Fáil were on 2% higher than they are today, so I wasn't able to haul them up either in that position and I remember people saying: 'God, could you not come down 20% and get the party up 5%.' Well anyway, I've managed to come down a fair bit and the party has only gone down a bit," he said.

Mr Ahern accepted his low satisfaction rating was caused by a combination of the controversy over the French wedding of his daughter, Georgina, to Westlife pop star Nicky Byrne, speculation about his private life, political factors and second-term blues. "It's probably a bit of all of those. I can never be certain."

Yet the Taoiseach also said that when the Millward Brown IMS poll, published in the Irish Independent, was taken, political events did kick in, but he had also suffered from a summer of bad publicity.

"It is a fact that in the month of August, which would normally be a quiet month for politicians, I'm told by my own press office I got 37 negative headlines in national papers. That I managed in the entire summer for 14 weeks out of 16 to get hammered in practically every Sunday paper."