‘Tribunal has become the trial of Bertie Ahern’
Following a Dáil debate on the tribunal, the Government passed by nine votes a motion affirming confidence in the inquiry, but raising concerns about its duration, cost and the leaking of documentation.
Launching a vigorous defence of Mr Ahern during the debate, Mr Mansergh said he wanted to see “no more good governments brought down by synthetic pseudo-ethical furores, like the passport nonsense”.
He was referring to the revelation that Mr Ahern, when finance minister in the 1994, had helped obtain a passport for businessman Norman Turner, who had made a $10,000 donation to Fianna Fáil earlier that year.
Mr Mansergh said the tribunal was not above criticism, and noted that the Supreme Court had been critical of aspects of the inquiry’s work. He said Mahon was following the path of the Beef Tribunal, which had turned into trials of former Fianna Fáil taoisigh Charles Haughey and Albert Reynolds.
“The Mahon Tribunal about certain planning matters has ended up — one might wonder how — as a trial of Bertie Ahern, complete with a Ken Starr-style special prosecutor,” said Mr Mansergh, referring to the US lawyer who had aggressively investigated former US president Bill Clinton.
Mr Mansergh defended the apparent contradictions in Mr Ahern’s explanations for lodgments to his personal accounts in the 1990s.
“The truth can sometimes be improbable. Any reasonable person will understand the difficulty the Taoiseach has in constructing in perfect good faith the rationale for every lodgment in his accounts 13 years ago.”
He praised the Taoiseach’s achievements, concluding: “The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party will stand with its leader.”
Social Affairs Minister Martin Cullen and Integration Minister Conor Lenihan were among others to defend Mr Ahern and question the tribunal’s cost and length.
Mr Lenihan said the public would be waiting “another 100 years” for the tribunal’s report, if it began a “ridiculous” inquiry into the passport issue.
However, Fine Gael TD Simon Coveney said Fianna Fáil ministers were engaged in a concerted effort “to undermine and discredit the work of the tribunal” so as to distract from the Taoiseach’s difficulties at the inquiry.
“People are sick of this type of politics: the cute hoorism, diversionary tactics to divert attention away from finding the truth, and the politics of party loyalty overriding what is in the public interest,” he said.
His colleague, TD Lucinda Creighton, said the country had seen “the mantle of corruption passed through the generations of leadership in Fianna Fáil” from Mr Haughey to Mr Ahern. However, Green Party TDs Paul Gogarty and Ciarán Cuffe said Fine Gael could not take the high moral ground, as it continued to take corporate donations and money from developers.
Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, however, said only one party would arrange a passport for a wealthy donor who happened to be seeking political support for a major development at the same time.
“Only one party and only one TD fits the bill in that case and that is Fianna Fáil and Bertie Ahern,” he said.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
