Ahern risks losing his political lap of honour the longer he stays on

THERE is no good reason for Bertie Ahern to stay in politics much longer.

Maybe Eamon Gilmore is correct in suggesting the best thing would be for him to use his address to the US Congress in April to mark the end of his contribution to public life.

It will be the second historic address for Ahern, after he told the House of Lords in May last year that Ireland and Britain were now “in an era of agreement... of new politics and new realities… Ireland’s hour has come; a time of peace, of prosperity, of old values and new beginnings”. There is no place for Ahern in those “new beginnings”.

Ironically, some of his more vocal supporters are the very people who are making that clear, despite their spirited defences of him in the context of his tribunal woes. Martin Mansergh, for example, became increasingly shrill last week as he defended the man he believes is the greatest Taosieach this country has ever had due to his role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, the social partnership agreements and his diplomatic triumphs in Europe.

It is difficult to dispute these achievements. But by focusing on Ahern’s past and his legacy, Mansergh is also highlighting that there is little, if anything, Ahern can achieve politically in the future.

As a historian as well as a Fianna Fáil TD, Mansergh understandably has his eye on the bigger picture and swats away questions about Ahern’s personal finances as if they were irrelevant and irritating flies.

But the questions have become anything but temporary distractions. Mansergh used to recall how Charles Haughey told him that his philosophy was “Never resign: It’s only a 24-hour wonder”.

Ahern’s Mahon tribunal nightmare, however, has dragged on interminably and it is time for him to prepare for his departure.

There is a certain truth to what Mansergh has been articulating in the context of Ahern’s legacy; just as he argued in relation to Haughey that “not everyone agrees that funding is the central issue which should determine how history judges Haughey.”

But in the realm of contemporary politics, the longer Ahern stays, the more likely that his achievements will fade into the background. With the Taoiseach on the ropes for the last few months Fianna Fáil troops have rallied to his defence, but they will inevitably become more equivocal and continue to squirm when asked the direct question that requires a one word answer: “Do you believe the Taoiseach’s account of his personal finances?”

Fianna Fáil often thrives when, to use an old phrase of PJ Mara’s, it is “Fianna Fáil versus the universe”, but the defences of Ahern are going to become increasingly strained and the issues that have surfaced at the tribunal will be seen as something Ahern and not the party as a whole needs to deal with.

A third successive election victory last year made Bertie Ahern the most successful leader of Fianna Fáil since Eamon de Valera. Mary O’Rourke was emphatic on the day of the election count that it “was a Bertie Ahern election and he won it for us”. Perhaps it was, but it may be seen in time as a final gift to the party rather than marking a new departure for Ahern.

In an unprecedented move in the history of Fianna Fáil, Ahern publicly named his chosen successor. This was not the action of someone planning to stay in charge for much longer. Perhaps he knew what would eventually be dragged out of him and his hacks at the tribunal.

His actions and words in the few months after the general election were quite bizarre, and occasionally unseemly and arrogant, particularly when he dismissed criticisms of the outlandish pay increases recommended to ministers.

But looking back on that now, why should we be surprised? As the Mahon revelations have made clear, Ahern likes to have a lot of money and has always done so. After the general election Ahern appeared to be exhausted and fed up with politics, which is hardly surprising. He then appeared to regain his appetite and resumed his combative stance, but was often hiding behind waffle while deliberately trying to confuse.

The only time we get any inkling of what he is really thinking is when he departs from his script at functions or book launches and snarls about the tribunals, or arrogantly dismisses the sincerity of those who hold different views.

For much of his career the image of him as a hardworking man of the people, with trials and tribulations in his personal life like so many of the rest of us, made him exceptionally popular.

But there are two Bertie Aherns. The first is the Dublin Central, down to earth local boy made good, but unaffected by the trappings.

The second is the Taoiseach who crops up in tribunal reports signing blank cheques, appears alongside the wealthy developers in the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races, stuffs state boards with his own friends, presides over a country where many of the super rich pay little or no tax, is paid a bigger salary than other prime ministers and has a history of accepting large sums of money from businessmen.

Ahern’s own ability to make the difficult issues someone else’s problem has often been apparent over the last 10 years, which is why, though he has occasionally been bruised and scraped, he has never been knocked out.

But the Mahon spotlight does not allow Ahern to shift the attention to other people, much as he would like to.

In the past, if there was a criticism to be made of Ahern it seemed to be that he saw others doing corrupt things and turned his head away or averted his eyes.

The Moriarty Report into payments to Charles Haughey in December 2006 highlighted his signing of blank cheques for Haughey, but it did not knock much out of Ahern because of tribunal fatigue, because Haughey was unique in the scale of his personal corruption, and because Fianna Fáil ministers successfully transmitted the message that the Moriarty Report was a history book rather than having relevance to contemporary politics.

When the Mahon Report is eventually published, that is probably what Fianna Fáil politicians will once again do, in seeking to dispense with the Ahern legacy and move on. They, after all, will still have elections to fight, and Ahern will be of no use to them at that stage.

Nobody expects the kind of conclusion reached by Moriarty about Haughey — that he devalued the quality of a national democracy — to be reached by Mahon about Ahern, but it is also inconceivable that the Mahon Tribunal will swallow Ahern’s incredible explanations.

In terms of posterity’s verdict, the difficulty for Ahern is that the continued focus on his finances is a reminder that he will be seen as one who came out of Haughey’s stable.

It is likely that future historians will devote much less attention to Ahern’s finances than contemporary journalists, but the historians are also likely to record that controversy and unanswered questions about Ahern’s finances destroyed his political lap of honour.