Could we be heading for a Bertie versus Gerry Adams Áras battle?
BERTIE Ahern still has the capacity to provoke an emotional response. The big question for Fianna Fáil is whether the negative outweighs the positive in that regard. If there’s enough good will towards the man who once was the most popular politician in Ireland – and then wasn’t – then is it beyond the bounds of possibility for him to become a party presidential candidate in 2025?
Much will depend on how the public reacts to him becoming an increasing public presence. He has been facilitated in some media quarters in recent years when talking about Brexit and the ongoing political situation in Northern Ireland. He keeps himself away from talking about economic matters – or maybe he isn’t even asked. He turns up at things here and there, such as the Garth Brooks concert at Croke Park last week, and apparently gets a good reception when he’s out and about.
Expulsion
It emerged last week that some members of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party want the iar-taoiseach (as he likes to be styled) readmitted in advance of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement next Easter. Some of them might have seen that as a way of softening leader Micheál Martin’s cough, knowing that Mr Ahern was furious that Mr Martin was about to formally propose his expulsion from the party in 2012. Mr Ahern pre-empted him by resigning first.
However, it turns out now that relationships have thawed since Mr Martin became Taoiseach in 2020. Mr Ahern wrote to him offering congratulations, which was generous in the circumstances. Mr Martin responded with equal graciousness. Now they are ‘very relaxed’ when they meet, at least according to the serving Taoiseach.
But it goes further than that. ‘I’ve been engaged with Bertie Ahern actually over the last year and a bit since the rows over the Protocol,’ Mr Martin told reporters recently, although he denied Mr Ahern is now an ‘adviser’.
He said he had been ‘valuable’ in engagement with communities in the North – ‘He’s very involved in Northern Ireland issues, maintains contact with different groups, and from my perspective that level of consultation will continue. I think he has a valuable insight into all of that.’ He also said Mr Ahern’s commitment to resolving the
Protocol impasse is ‘very sincere and heartfelt and that’s something that I take value from’.
As endorsements, go that’s pretty emphatic. It seems as if Mr Ahern has ‘served his time’. It is ten years now since he resigned from the party he had led for 14 years – 1994 to 2008. The circumstances of that departure are worth recalling: The Mahon tribunal – investigating payments to politicians as part of the planning process, among other things – stopped short of making an outright finding of corruption against Mr Ahern but it said he failed to ‘truthfully account’ for sources of money he accepted outside of his political salary when he was finance minister
in the 1990s. Remember when he famously claimed that he didn’t have a bank account?
Mr Ahern claimed the donations he got from wealthy supporters were not backhanders but ‘dig-outs’ from friends to help him with the costs arising from his legal separation from his wife Miriam, and to fund the purchase of a new home. He disputed the tribunal’s findings, saying he ‘never accepted a bribe or a corrupt payment’.
Mr Martin said Mr Ahern had ‘betrayed the trust’ of the country and the party. Now, however, Mr Martin says that ‘no one can take from’ Mr Ahern his contribution to the peace process.
Asked if he was going to allow Mr Ahern back into the fold, the Taoiseach said: ‘It’s ten years on. I’m conscious of the contribution he has made to peace in the country. That’s something that in the fullness of time we could look at.’
Achievement
For some, Mr Ahern’s worst offences were those outlined in the Mahon tribunal. However, it is worth noting that much of this was known when the voters re-elected Fianna Fáil to power in 2007.
To others, Mr Ahern can never be forgiven for his stewardship of the public finances during the Celtic Tiger years. It cannot be denied that Mr Ahern’s essential work during the peace process was a notable achievement. The question is how the electorate weighs this work against his failures.
It was the work that Mr Ahern and others – such as Tony Blair and John Hume – did that dragged Sinn Féin to the Good Friday Agreement. And that is where Fianna Fáil seems to be looking, wanting to ‘own’ the celebrations. It wants to get the credit for bringing about peace, and to stop Sinn Féin rewriting history for its own benefit. That is a reasonable approach, but it would be harder to pull off if Mr Ahern were not a member of Fianna Fáil, to take the plaudits.
If the approach works, thoughts of the presidency will arise, especially if Sinn Féin thinks of putting forward Gerry Adams. But the burden of Bertie Ahern’s economic and personal financial legacy may never be done away with, even if his past sins pale in comparison to those of Gerry Adams.