Bertie can’t tell his own money from someone else’s

THE one brutal fact facing all of us is that the Taoiseach does not (in the most benign interpretation) understand the difference between personal monies and other people’s money held in trust for other purposes.

Unfortunately, when the Moriarty Tribunal suggested he had been “imprudent” with regard to the multiple signing of blank cheques on the Haughey’s leader’s account, his response (“everybody had been at it”) indicated he had no grasp of the core issues — notably accountability and responsibility. Or of their gravity.

The Gilmartin allegations may turn out to be a fantasy or worse, but what the Mahon tribunal, and Mr Ahern’s own attempts to appeal beyond it, have done is to confirm this glaring deficiency.