Bertie blows more bluff than bluster

Political Correspondent Shaun Connolly asks is Hurricane Bertie in danger of blowing out.

HURRICANE Bertie was in danger of finally blowing itself out with the once category five political storm dropping to a category two as it yet again made landfall at Dublin Castle.

After menacing the Gulf of Credibility for so long, Bertie proved more bluff than bluster as tail winds ravished the shabby basement witness box, leaving the detritus of allegations and explanations swirling in their wake.

As with New Orleans before it, the New Jerusalem of Irish political standards ushered in by the late 1990s ethics legislation has often looked battered by the onslaught of Hurricane Bertie.

In the Big Easy the levies merely groaned and then overflowed, but in the Big Sleazy political culture probed by Mahon, the levies were imposed on businessmen by greedy power brokers and overflowed into envelopes of cash for favours.

Toppled taoiseach Bertie Ahern took no cash and gave no favours, he insisted during exchanges with tribunal counsel Des O’Neill, which were as icy as the temperature in the tatty, cavernous bowel of the castle, which resembles part courtroom, part doss-house.

Was that a slight relish in Mr O’Neill’s voice when he seemed to linger a little too long on the word “Mr” as he welcomed Mr Ahern back into the witness box for his 12th time?

After all, it is not every senior counsel who could claim to have helped bring down a taoiseach.

The interplay between the two was, as usual, as fascinating as it was fractious.

Mr Ahern refused to accept the counsel’s assertion that he had become finance minister in November 1991 because Charles Haughey had “removed” Albert Reynolds from the post.

“I think he resigned,” shot back Mr Ahern.

Yes, that’s right, Albert “resigned” — just in the same way Shergar decided to run headlong, and at very great speed, into an IRA bullet.

Mr Ahern built on the “glass of water” and “cup of tea” he had never taken from developer Owen O’Callaghan by adding “a penny”, and helpfully, in case we didn’t quite get the picture, “or a cent, in today’s money” from the man.

How ironic that the allegations regarding bribes from Mr O’Callaghan as told by fellow developer Tom Gilmartin appear to be of the flimsiest nature, yet triggered the long, traumatic trawl through Mr Ahern’s myriad of bank accounts where all those unusual sterling lodgments lay hidden. None of them, nor the bizarre, often unbelievable explanations for them, produced the silver bullet that did for him.

Loyal secretary Gráinne Carruth unwittingly loaded the revolver with her tear-soaked February evidence and Brian Cowen is believed to have put said weapon to the taoiseach’s head at that fabled meeting in St Luke’s when Bertie finally accepted the game was up.

Taoiseach Cowen calmed the Fianna Fáil troops on the other side of the country, while yesterday’s taoiseach relived yesterday’s news.

Mr O’Neill tried to pin him down to individual brush strokes, but Mr Ahern was an artist painting on the broadest canvas.

The heady scent of power and air of lost importance permeated his every utterance as the simplest answer was weighted down with every detail of office.

From nowhere, Mr Ahern pontificated on the currency crisis, but alas it was not concerning the sudden movements of foreign currency into his own accounts, but his heroic struggle to save the punt for the nation. Then Mr O’Neill took another angle. His questions circled and circled Los Angeles Airport, but refused to land.

The ghost of Liam Lawlor then shivered through the proceedings — Mr Ahern had met US businessmen at LAX in March 1994 to discuss, according to records discovered from the late Mr Lawlor, the national stadium which Mr Ahern claimed not to have dealt with until November of that year. Letters from a US firm were documented in the days before the encounter, some mentioning a proposed casino in Phoenix Park, some not.

What could Mr O’Neill be getting at? Surely not dollars. Mr Ahern has been categorical that he has never dealt in that currency. He has been adamant that the lodgment the tribunal said equalled exactly $45,000 was inquiry fantasy.

Dusk settled and the castle prepared for Hurricane Bertie to bear down for another day — sure in the knowledge there is always a new storm system brewing.