Moriarty report - Understated regret from Taoiseach

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s expression of regret at practices within Fianna Fáil, including his signing of blank cheques for the late Charles Haughey, can at best be described as startling understatement.

What the Moriarty report revealed about the former late Taoiseach, who accepted payments equating to €45 million in today’s terms, amounted to a litany of corruption and hypocrisy that utterly debased the office he was honoured to occupy.

The tribunal diverged substantially in its opinion of Haughey from the statement made at his graveside by Mr Ahern, six months ago: “If the definition of a patriot is someone who devotes all their energy to the betterment of their country, Charles Haughey was a patriot to his fingertips.”

While the tribunal accepted that Mr Ahern was unaware what the money drawn on the leader’s fund was used for, it also said that it “undoubtedly facilitated the misuse” of taxpayers’ money.

Nobody would accuse Mr Ahern, a qualified accountant, of being naive then or now, but he displayed a remarkably loose attitude towards public money at that stage.

It is inadequate now to say that the signing of multiple blank cheques was a practice that anybody did in the country, because “anybody” in the country was not responsible for the disbursement of public money.

His was one of three signatures which was used in Fianna Fáil’s leader account, which was there for a specific purpose, and not Charles Haughey’s personal benefit. It was a fund made by the Exchequer to the leaders of political parties to help finance their organisation’s parliamentary activities.

Haughey diverted it for his own purposes, aided and abetted by the “regrettable” bad practice of Bertie Ahern, which — even at that time — his own profession would have frowned upon.

His government, which accorded a State funeral to Haughey, subsequently put in place mechanisms that, hopefully, will obviate such financial abuse.