Haughey on Ahern: I don’t think he’s that intelligent

Charles Haughey was only “mildly impressed” by Mary McAleese as President and, three years before his death, made disparaging remarks about Bertie Ahern’s intelligence.

The views of the late former taoiseach on the first McAleese term and the controversial presidential election of 1997 were revealed yesterday by Senator Terry Leyden, who served as a junior minister in a Haughey-led government in 1982.

Chairing a session at the Percy French Festival in Castlecoote, Co Roscommon, Mr Leyden revealed that he had kept contemporaneous notes of a meeting with Mr Haughey at his home, Abbeville in Kinsealy, Co Dublin, in 2003, three years before he died from prostate cancer.