Bertie has the book that tells why you’re too busy to be bothered

THE ripples of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s 10th anniversary interviews continue to cause little waves of coverage not only here in Ireland but even abroad.

His declaration that he was “one of the few socialists left” generated international coverage last week in newspapers as diverse as the New York Times and the Scotsman. However, one aspect of the interviews which has attracted surprisingly little comment, even here at home, was the Taoiseach’s remark in one of the interviews that he has twice read Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone. Some cynics may dismiss even this throw-away remark as part of his repositioning, but I suspect it is genuine.

The themes dealt with in Putnam’s work have been reflected in many of Bertie Ahern’s recent speeches. Robert Putnam is a Harvard-based sociologist who published this book in 1995. It caused a sensation in the US.