Ahern’s court move only fuels the suspicion he has something to hide

Not surprisingly, they are asking what the Taoiseach is trying to hide. Why won’t he allow questions about his statements to the Dail? Is it because he knows that he misled parliament?

HERE we go again. Here’s another column about Bertie Ahern and the Mahon tribunal. How much more of this can you bear? The easy option would be not to write this, to do something else instead. The fear for newspapers and broadcasters is that the public’s interest in Ahern’s dealings with the tribunal has become a serious turn-off for readers, listeners and viewers.

Continued micro-analysis of Ahern’s financial dealings and his arguments with the tribunal run the risk of appearing like a vendetta is being conducted. It might be safer for the media to turn to something else, not just to maintain the interest of the audience but to ensure that it does not become hostile to a perceived agenda.

Well, rightly or wrongly, I’m not for turning. Some things may not be exciting and may even be boring, but they remain important.

The Taoiseach’s behaviour — both when he was finance minister taking money he shouldn’t have and now that he is under investigation for that — is fundamental to our trust in how democracy functions.

The media would be negligent if it ignored essential issues such as this and didn’t trust the public to be interested. To do so would be to allow conditions in which outrageous abuses of power could take place.

The media cannot be deflected by the loud voices of those who claim they want something else because the suspicion is that they are acting on behalf of Fianna Fáil in doing so. The media exists not just to make money for its owners but to behave honestly in its presentation to the public of what it can find.

In any case I suspect part of Ahern’s strategy is to string things out deliberately, to play such a long game that the public become sympathetic to him again, that it starts to treat him like a victim rather than the transgressor. The tribunal has to be made more unpopular than Ahern and the media, even if it is to be used to put his message across, has to be taken down, too.

The appeal to the High Court is cunning and devious in that regard. Contrary to original comment, it may not necessarily buy him the time to avoid questions at the tribunal in its public hearing next week.

He will still have to appear to answer questions on issues relating to the purchase of his house — and some of those promise to be sensational.

But he will not have to fight off questions on his foreign currency dealings or the investigation into the veracity of claims he made to the Dáil back in late 2006 for now, and possibly forever, if his action succeeds.

He is also able to paint the already unpopular tribunal in a bad light again, as being unfair to him. It is a charge with which many will sympathise, if people prefer to deal with emotions rather than facts. It is not a risk-free strategy, of course. Many people believe there is no smoke without fire and what he’s up to is one hell of a smokescreen. Not surprisingly, they are asking what the Taoiseach is trying to hide.

Why won’t he allow questions about his statements to the Dail? Is it because he knows that he misled parliament?

Why won’t he allow the tribunal access to the advice of the so-called expert witness on currency transactions? Would it show a story was concocted that, when challenged, would fall apart?

Perception is important and Ahern runs the risk of looking like Cardinal Desmond Connell in seeking to use the law and the courts to assist in a cover-up. In some respects the damage has been done already. As Richard Nixon found during Watergate it wasn’t the break-in that did for him but the attempted cover-up and the lies that unravelled subsequently. In creating the smokescreen, Ahern may be playing with very dangerous fire.

In fairness, he has some reasonably strong arguments to offer in support of his position. As Taoiseach he should not have lesser rights than any other citizen. He is entitled to cite constitutional privilege in his role as a TD. He is not being given the details of the tribunal’s contentions on currency matters so he feels it would be unfair to give over his.

But it’s not that simple either. Traditionally, the privilege afforded to Dáil deputies has been used mainly to make accusations or report facts that, outside of the Dail, might lead to libel writs. Previous legal actions in the courts have centred around the right of TDs to protect sources for such comments. Nobody has ever seen the privilege as a way for deputies to tell self-serving lies.

Not that Ahern is being accused of that, but it is unfortunate for him that correspondence from the tribunal to him suggests seven statements of his in the Dáil are in need of close examination as to their accuracy. And Ahern clearly wants to stop that.

So in some respects the damage has been done already. Things could even be made worse if Ahern were to lose his case: more attention would be focused then on Mahon’s public investigation of the very issues Ahern has challenged.

But I suspect this risk was the lesser of two evils. If he wins the case he lessens the impact of the tribunal’s probe. If he loses, he is no worse off in reality than he would have been had he not taken the case.

We can only imagine though what his Government colleagues must make of it all, despite their statements of support. The Greens and the PDs are trying to shrug it off as a “personal matter”, as if it is somehow not relevant to the credibility and reputation of this Government.

Fianna Fáil ministers were more silent than usual; they must be wondering just how often Ahern is putting his own selfish needs ahead of the good of the party and the Government.

IT SEEMS Ahern alerted cabinet colleagues to his strategy only hours before his barristers trotted off to the High Court last Monday. A detailed application for a High Court injunction takes time to prepare, so while Ahern may have taken the decision to go through with the action at a late hour he must have been considering it for some time.

It possibly explains why only the previous Monday he had passed firmly on the opportunity to comment on Cardinal Connell’s remarkable challenge to the commission investigating paedophilia by priests in the Dublin archdiocese.

I thought at the time this was disgraceful, that the leader of our Government should have urged the cardinal to co-operate fully with a State-appointed commission investigating a catalogue of dreadful crimes carried out by people who had abused the public trust in them as well.

I had put it down to Ahern’s consistent reluctance to stand up to his church. But now it is clear Ahern could not have condemned Connell for seeking to frustrate a legitimate State-appointed inquiry when he was planning to do exactly the same thing at another State tribunal.

Connell, of course, saw the error of his ways and thankfully withdrew from his attempt to muzzle the commission of inquiry last Monday. Ahern has said he has had no option but to follow his legal advice and therefore to challenge the working of the Mahon tribunal — a body in which he had voted confidence only the previous week.

That is another transparent nonsense. Ahern is well able to do as suits him. That he has done this to suit him is as plain as the nose on his well made-up face.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.