Bertie reveals grandfather took his own life

BERTIE Ahern has opened up about his grandfather’s suicide for the first time, as part of RTE’s Who Do You Think You Are?

Maurice Ahern died in 1933 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. In tonight’s episode, Mr Ahern recalls how his own father, Con, decided not to take on the family farm, choosing a life in Dublin instead. This went against Maurice’s wishes but Con would not change his mind so the farm went to his younger brother. As Bertie explains: “His wife had died just six months before that and then my father had left against his wishes... it was a sad end to him because he apparently was a very hard-working man.” Mr Ahern said: “Very few people would have ever said somebody committed suicide because at the time people covered that up. But my father, for his own reason, made sure that we all understood.” Meanwhile, referencing controversial remarks he made during his time as Taoiseach, he says: “I remember at one time getting myself into a bit of political argument about using the word, even though it is regularly done on sports programmes... I did it on a political programme and some of the people who wouldn’t have loved me said ‘if you understood it in your family, you wouldn’t have said that’.” He said: “I understood it very well in my family because I had grown up listening to that.”

The programme airs on RTE One at 9.30pm.