Soldiers of Destiny won’t account for defence in the past

MICHEÁL MARTIN is forging a new way forward for his party, but embers of old still burn from a few short years ago when he and others rushed forward to attack the Mahon Tribunal for its enquiries into Bertie Ahern’s mysterious £215,000.

The media barrage against the tribunal by cabinet ministers began soon after Ahern began giving his evidence in Sept 2007.

On the Sunday after Ahern first stepped into the witness box, Willie O’Dea, the defence minister, joined the battle. O’Dea was, and is, a columnist with the Sunday Independent. On Sept 16, the paper’s splash front page headline read: ‘All Out War: Ahern Takes On Tribunal’. The story was based on an interview with O’Dea. The first line read: “In a dramatic escalation of the confrontation between cabinet and the Mahon Tribunal, a government minister last night accused the inquiry of acting outside its terms of reference in its inquiries into the financial affairs of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.”