Ahern denies using separation to get public sympathy

BERTIE AHERN last night denied he was using the breakdown of his marriage to try and garner public sympathy and deflect attention from his tangled financial affairs.

As Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny again insisted he did not believe Mr Ahern’s evidence to the Mahon corruption probe, the Taoiseach accused the opposition of engaging in “sewer” politics.

Mr Ahern said he had been forced to expose details of his separation from wife Miriam in order to explain unusual lodgments to his accounts and those held on his behalf by his then partner Celia Larkin while he was finance minister in the mid-1990s.