Tara decision could be Bertie’s legacy

CRUELLY but superbly, you wrote recently that Bertie Ahern had been measured for his lame duck suit(October 4).

The severest of his critics — and even the most confused of those who are confused about his confused account of his confused accounts — cannot take away from him what he achieved in the EU and the North.

However, the brutal political reality is that those who John Gormley called those “really quite nice people” in Fianna Fáil are now debating not whether Bertie goes, but when. And how. And can (or should) he be kept politically alive until after the local and European elections in 2009? Mr Ahern has the option of a humiliating Nixon- or Thatcher-style forced exit or a more choreographed departure at a time of his choosing. Going before the P45 is flung on his desk, he could assure his place in Irish patriotism with one last brilliant stroke.