Ahern clarifies Haughey ‘compliment’

CHARLIE HAUGHEY’S infamous description of Bertie Ahern as “the most skilful, most devious, most cunning of them all” was meant as a compliment and not a criticism, the Taoiseach has insisted.

The late Mr Haughey made the remark shortly after the conclusion of negotiations between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats to form a government in 1989.

The comment was made in the context of Mr Ahern brokering a successful outcome to the negotiations, which had proved immensely difficult for several reasons.

“One, because this was Fianna Fáil going into coalition for the first time ever. That was a big decision,” he said.

“Secondly, the discussions were very complex, because there was Haughey, there was [then PD leader Des] O’Malley, there was Pat Cox, there was Bobby Molloy. Characters who I got on well with but wouldn’t have been mutually acceptable to each other, I suppose.

“It was looking very bad for a few days and I managed to turn it around. And we were giving the press briefings at the end of it, and I was inside with four or five political correspondents.

“And Charlie walked in [and made the remark]. And he said it in a totally complimentary fashion — which everybody picked up as such. He said those words. I knew at that moment that everything else that happened at the press conference would never be properly recorded, and that the lads would all write down that line and then go home for the weekend and do no more work.”

It was “nonsense” to read from that phrase that Mr Ahern was a Machiavellian character, he said.

“That’s all nonsense. I’m a far more straightforward and down-to-earth person. I’m not a complex person at all. And when I read these insights into me… I think a lot of these people haven’t got a clue what I’m like, actually,” he said in a weekend interview. “I think I’m a loyal person.”

Mr Ahern reiterated his belief that someone had been out “to bury” him when recently leaking details of the payments he accepted from friends and businessmen in the 1990s.

But he said he did not know who.

“I’d love to know. And I’d bury them,” he said, smiling. “But somebody was. Somebody had fairly calculated and manipulatively planned this out. I could get lucky some day if I find out.”