Day of judgment - Clear danger to Ahern’s reputation

THESE next two days may turn out to be the most challenging of Bertie Ahern’s career with a clear and present danger to his reputation.

Mr Ahern and his legal team will have prepared thoroughly for his interrogation by the Mahon Tribunal. An AIB official has already expressed surprise after he was contacted by Mr Ahern and asked what the tribunal might know of his foreign exchange dealings.

Mr Ahern will have to give a clear account of how money was lodged in his name, why his benefactors provided him with that money and why he did not have a bank account for six years?

Was it for convenience or for concealment?

“Stamp duty issues”, “dig-outs” and “loans” repaid only when exposed to publicity, will also have to be explained in a way that is rooted in the reality we all have to bring to our financial affairs.

This reality will also inform any understanding of why Manchester businessman Mr Michael Wall delivered an unreceipted sum, in various currencies, to Mr Ahern’s constituency office in the days before he was expected to be made taoiseach.

The evidence of bank officials, which has already thrown doubt on the accuracy of Mr Ahern’s memory regarding the denomination of those funds, will also have to be resolved.

He will have to do this without the incoherent language that has deflected, deflated and distracted those who would question him throughout his political career. Neither will he be able to resort to trying to intimidate with the fury he has occasionally shown. Nor will a vaudeville performance where his tears are barely suppressed — like that given during the infamous Dobson interview — suffice.

Mr Ahern knows this is a high-stakes game and if this is, as he insists, his last term as taoiseach he will not relish the prospect of all of his fine political achievements being seen as a footnote to an ignominious visit to Dublin Castle. He will be only too well aware of how the reputation of his great mentor and “Boss” Mr Haughey was finally ruined after he was forced to attend the same venue.

Though Mr Ahern has never been flagrantly exhibitionist like the vain Squire of Kinsealy parallels may be drawn however erroneously.

If there was a whiff of cordite at the end of July when an angry Judge Mahon warned Mr Ahern’s legal team to curb their “offensive” language when they suggested that the tribunal had an agenda, we can expect nothing less than a sustained barrage of first world war proportions when Mr Ahern takes the stand today.

None of us would relish the prospect of having to give details of financial dealings completed a decade ago and it may well be that Mr Ahern innocently finds himself in Dublin Castle today because of a culture of secrecy and discretion so widespread in Ireland.

Mr Ahern’s reputation is not the only one on the line. The tribunal — established nearly a decade ago in November 1997 — must be able to prove it has substantial, sustainable and important evidence or else it is its reputation that will suffer.

Mr Ahern has his supporters in cabinet and all across the country. As they rally to defend the Taoiseach who they see as being set upon, a victim of begrudgery and envy, of dreadful attacks on a man instrumental in resolving the Northern problem and creator of unprecedented affluence, they might ask themselves a simple, straightforward question.

If a business person offered evidence as confusing, as obtuse, each snippet surrendered reluctantly, coupled with amazing examples of generosity from strangers and friends, “dig-outs” and briefcases full of cash, to a Revenue Commissioners’ inquiry how would they fare?