Chronicle of a conspiracy foretold but the mysteries of Bertiegate remain

SOFT furnishings from Brown Thomas; €2,116, a swanky new conservatory: €12,000; a sympathy surge after a sad-eyed statement when you’re sliding in the polls: Priceless.

It was a confident, almost cocky, Bertie Ahern that emerged blinking into the car park of Blanchardstown Shopping Centre to declare he had finally explained his way out of the payments crisis.

The Taoiseach has often been accused of speaking in riddles over this affair, but it was clear he was also touched byprophesies.

Apparently, everything that has so far happened in this unsettling saga had been foretold to him in the Da Bertie Code.

After insisting he was not a conspiracy theorist, Mr Ahern then set out a sweeping theory of conspiracy that began in a hotel in west Galway last August when shadowy figures met to plot his fall.

The non-conspiracy conspiracy was later relayed to a disbelieving Mr Ahern by a person who he refuses to name, but initially believed to be “zany” when he revealed the five predictions now born into truth.

But, once again for Mr Ahern, the numbers did not seem to quite add up: Five things? Like the mysteries of Fatima it must be left to the true believer to decipher the clues. There were, of course, the two revelations of previously unknown loans, dig-outs, whip-rounds and payments that exploded out of the Mahon Tribunal. But what were the other three mysteries of Connemara?

Low, we can reveal the trinity of truths told to the Taoiseach before they transpired, to be: Manchester United would crash out of the Champions League in the semi-finals, he would have to fork out twice as much in pocket money as a granddad and Dick Roche would strangely disappear from TV screens during the campaign to stop him scaring voters.

But, surely if he was as wired into the future as he thinks, the Taoiseach would not have chosen to reveal all in Blanchardstown , as allegations Mr Ahern tried to block its creation sparked the Mahon probe.

Everyone knows the sixth mystery of Bertiegate: He’s got the Tánaiste where he wants him.

At this point in the last election Michael McDowell was up a lamppost, sailing into government without a care. This time around he is up a very unpleasant creek, sailing against the tide with half a paddle thrown to him by Bertie’s statement.

A week after the PD pantomime of “oh yes we will leave government! — Oh no we won’t!”, the Tánaiste once again has his moral fig leaf in place and is insisting he is fully satisfied with the Taoiseach’s latest explanation of the seemingly unexplainable.

And yet, those nagging questions remain. Why did Michael Wall give Celia Larkin money intended for Mr Wall’s stamp duty? Would it not have been better for him to give such monies to a solicitor, not the partner of his tenant, or is she a dab hand at conveyancing as well as picking curtains?

And if Mr Ahern is, as he stated, expecting to pay the revenue an amount due to the €50,000 “dig-out” he got from friends, does that mean his Revenue affairs were not in order while finance minister?

If Mr Ahern does not want to tell us, maybe he can get his “zany” mystery friend to let us in on the facts and we can all move on from this sorry, nasty, little affair.