Government winces at Bertie’s ‘quadruple negative’ ramblings

BERTIE AHERN delivered the latest reversal of his tax position in the manner of a rambling madman at a bus stop.

As he did so, ministerial colleagues deployed the same look and body language as fearful commuters ardently hoping the gibbering threat amongst them would wander off down the road and just leave them alone.

It was an almost pitiful sight as the Taoiseach totally backtracked on his emphatic statements of last week that he couldn’t get a tax clearance certificate until Mahon wrapped up.

“Mumble, mumble, tax, mumble, mumble, wrong, mumble, misled, mumble, mumble not my fault, mumble...”

The key quote from Mr Ahern is almost beyond parody.

“It is not correct. If I said so I wasn’t correct. I can’t recall if I did say it, but if I,I,I did not say, or if I, I did say it, I didn’t mean to say it — that these issues could not be dealt with until the end of the Mahon Tribunal. That is not what Revenue said,” Mr Ahern told an incredulous Dáil struggling to keep up with his twisting confession.

It was all in marked contrast to the usual brazen Vicky Pollard “Yeah, but no, but yeah...” non-apology apologies the Taoiseach prefers to deliver, though the hurricane of verbage remained the same as both tactics leave onlookers bemused, bewildered and breathless as they scramble to piece together what they heard.

By now Labour leader Eamon Gilmore’s smile was almost as wide as the Taoiseach’s credibility gap as he congratulated Mr Ahern on the diversionary delight of the “quadruple negative” his question had just elicited.

Government benches were unfillable as Fine Gael’s debate of confidence in the Mahon Tribunal rolled around.

Swollen opposition numbers gazed down upon the rather undynamic looking duo of John Gormley and Junior Minister Tony Killeen, who were the sole Coalition calvary to bother to turn up.

The Environment Minister fidgeted impatiently in his isolation as the opposition tore into his party’s “moral compromise” over Mr Ahern’s tangled tribunal tribulations.

Suddenly, there was motion at the back of the chamber and Mr Gormley’s spirits rose. The FF political heavyweights had arrived to give his flank cover. Then as the lumbering figures of Willie O’Dea and Conor Lenihan bore into view, the truth dawned on the Environment Minister — the Taoiseach clearly had as much contempt for him as for the Tribunal.

And there they all sat, the Government benches groaning under the strain of the four of them — Mr Gormley, the not-so-jolly looking Green giant, and the three dwarfs.

Indeed, what Mr O’Dea lacked in intellectual muscle he was determined to make up for in sassiness as he stormed in, thumbs aloft, racing down the steps to the front bench, similar to a contestant on a game show like The Price Is Right, which perhaps wasn’t the image FF wanted to project.

Mr Gormley, head down, voice disinterested, rattled through his bland speech and, holding his nose, fled the scene as quickly as he could to return to making planet Earth safe for penguins once again.

It had been another unbelievable day in the comic opera that is Bertie versus the bung probe.