Cult hero Bertie: there’s just no getting rid of him

THERE is a school of thought that if the report of the McCracken Tribunal into Charles Haughey’s venal trousering of other people’s money had come out a couple of months earlier, then politics would have had a different complexion over the past 10 years.

The report was published in August of 1997, over two months after the general election of June 6. Some say that the findings of the report were so potentially catastrophic for Fianna Fáil and for Bertie Ahern that if the report had been published before the election (in April or May of that year), the three-party rainbow coalition would comfortably have been returned to power.

I’m not so sure, not so sure at all. For one, Bertie Ahern was only a bit player in the saga surrounding payments to Charlie Haughey. Besides, his little cameo (he unwittingly signed blank cheques for the party leader’s allowance) did not come to light until the Moriarty Tribunal began probing other aspects of Haughey’s personal finances.