Gone in 120 seconds

THIRTEEN days that gripped the nation and put every other political issue on hold and suspension. Nothing else mattered during that time. It dominated the front pages and the main bulletins.

It gobbled up thousands of words, involved tears, drama, brink-manship, panic stations, a maze of contradictory explanations, fuzziness, confusion, allegations, conspiracies and anger.

And in the space of about two minutes yesterday, it came to an end. Almost as quickly as you’d blow out a candle.

Bertie Ahern came to the end of his speech — it has to be said, after delivering another 13 minutes of self-justification — and uttered the words “error”, “misjudgment”, “regret” and “apologies”. At that moment, you knew that he had finally got over the line.

Not fully. Some questions — and big questions — remain unanswered.

A blur of opacity still surrounds too many of the events. Or to put it another way, we had no luck finding the shovels that they used for the dig-out. But the audience yesterday was neither the opposition nor the people. It was the politician flanking the Taoiseach on the front bench, on the Government side and his seven colleagues. Once Michael McDowell applauded the Taoiseach’s speech, we knew that the comet had passed. We may now witness its tail lingering in the skies for the next few days. But the way things played out, Bertigate has now been consigned to history, for now.

The internal logic of politics might not pass muster in the real world. The various explanations and excuses would run into turbulence in a court of law, or even in front of a schoolteacher in a classroom. But in the world of politics, moral relativism reigns. Last week, in a moment in which he probably raised the bar too high, Mr McDowell reeled off a list of questions that the Taoiseach needed to answer in relation to the Manchester payments. The crunch one seemed to be his demand that the Taoiseach name those who attended the Manchester dinner and who organised a whip-around for him.

Yesterday, Mr Ahern was able to produce only three names of the 25-27 people who attended — names that were already in the public domain. The rest, including members of his Drumcondra retinue who travelled with him from Dublin, remained unknown, the John Does of this entire enterprise.

But since the weekend, we all knew that the credible and convincing account demanded by Mr McDowell — the “warts and all” story — would boil down to this: A formula of words in which the Taoiseach admitted in a roundabout way — and without actually saying it — that he was wrong.

It was heavily qualified. It had more riders than a bumper race in Galway. But the magic words were uttered and — hey presto! — the crisis disappeared.

The one line of the PD statement issued late last night that mattered was: “Our view on today’s events is that Bertie Ahern is fit to continue as Taoiseach.”

There was a calculation, a political hunch, playing in all that, that moral relativism isn’t just confined to the world of politics or the media. In Britain, this would have been described as a scandal and Mr Ahern may well have been walking the plank. Here, too, ministers have walked for less.

But there was an overarching reality that played into FF’s hands. That was the Bertie factor. So widespread is his appeal, so common is his touch, so St Bernard is his anorak that those who surround him knew that those qualities could overcome a venal rather than a mortal sin. They knew that there was a human side to all this that could eclipse the strict legal requirements. In that calculation, as Brian Cowen might say, they were not incorrect. Feedback from their own TDs, a couple of weekend polls, their own instinct about Ahern’s cache, emboldened the Fianna Fáilers to hold the line.

And the line was that he had done nothing wrong. To stand over that, they had to go through logical hoops to create a split personality — Bertie private citizen and Bertie public figure. To stand over it, too, they had to resort to the technical argument that he had breached no tax or ethical code (for the simple reason that none that would have scuppered him were in place at the time). To stand over it too, they had to create another artificial construct: the dig-out (a class of payment made by friends to a Minister for Finance in straitened circumstances).

Ministers have come to the Dáil before and made personal statements. Because they are set-pieces — and often involve days of very careful preparation — more often than not, what you get is a tour de force. It happened with Lowry and Burke and even with the late Liam Lawlor (though his reputation was already in such tatters at that stage that it could not be defended).

It is true that Ahern’s payments were of a vastly different scale and order. But Burke drew a line in the sand that day which was quickly erased by an incoming tide of fresh allegations of graft.

For the Taoiseach, it’s unlikely that any new details that emerge in relation to this set of facts will fell him. But it’s extraordinary that he could pony up only three names out of 25. And the fog has not fully been lifted on how he managed to save £50,000 when he had no bank account of his own. Did he squirrel it away, as Pat Rabbitte suggested, in a sock in the attic.

To be sure, whoever leaked the information in the first place, had damage in mind. But once leaked into the public domain, as the events of the past 13 days have demonstrated conclusively, the Taoiseach had no choice but to answer the fundamental questions that touched on the propriety of his actions.

And damage is what it has caused. The events of the past fortnight will follow Ahern around like a stray dog between now and next summer. For the first time, it puts a question mark over his de Valera tendencies for longevity.

And for the PDs, it also marked the sudden end of Michael McDowell’s honeymoon. Tactically, he made three crucial mistakes. Last week, he went too soft on the Taoiseach on Wednesday, way too hard on Thursday, and way too soft again on Friday night. It all became too much of a flip-flop. The opposition can point to a party which has surrendered its independence and become a satellite of Fianna Fáil.

Yesterday, we finally had a half- hearted admission of error and misjudgment and regret. But it is not over by any means. These events will play and replay, haunt and harry the Government over the next eight months.