Ministers’ questions - Reality can’t be denied for much longer

TÁNAISTE Mary Harney and Environment Minister John Gormley did yesterday what a growing number of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s disconcerted colleagues have been doing for some time, but at least, and at last, they did it in public.

They did what most people in the country, including Ms Harney’s former colleague Michael McDowell, have being doing for a number of years. They acknowledged deep dissatisfaction with the Taoiseach’s explanations — the many, varied and fluid explanations — of how he survived for so long without bank accounts. How, all of a sudden, he had access to so many and how he cannot resolve conflicting evidence about lodgments in various currencies and at various times.

Whether yesterday’s belated salvos are more than cynical shots across the bows of Mr Ahern, whose credibility has been stretched beyond breaking point, or an overdue recognition by Ms Harney and Mr Gormley of their responsibilities remains to be seen.