Ahern and Cowen: a disgrace to the Áras
IT is one of the least known and most eclectic institutions of our State – a body that has met just 26 times since it was created under the 1937 Constitution and just eight times in the past 14 years.
But neither the fact that past presidents have tended to seek i ts advice so sparingly, nor that a president can in any event override that advice if he so wishes, should diminish i ts Constitutional significance. The Council of State, along with the President himself and of course the Supreme Court, is one of the three sentinels who stand guard on our behalf over Bunreacht na hÉireann and therefore our rights as individual citizens.
Its role in advising the President is every bit as important in ensuring that no Government oversteps the Constitutional mark, as is his own ability to refer proposed legislation to the Supreme Court and the court’s ability to rule on it.
Yesterday’s meeting i n Áras an Uachtaráin, therefore, was no mere formality – but a key part of the process of ensuring that the abortion Bill does not, as previous attempts to legislate in this area have done, open up a Pandora’s Box. Meanwhile, it is also perfectly understandable that Éamon de Valera, in seeking to create an institution where Constitutional advice would be tempered by experience, should have included former taoisigh in its ranks.
But what Mr de Valera could never have envisaged in 1937 was that former taoisigh might one day include not only the man who almost bankrupted the country but a man who misled a tribunal.
It is outrageous enough that Brian Cowen, the taoiseach who presided over the bank guarantee, and Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach who could not satisfactorily explain where his own money came from, should be in receipt of gold-plated €100,000 pensions.
That they apparently think their advice worthy of the President’s consideration is bizarre.
And that they should, in the circumstances, have the brass neck to turn up at the Áras at all merely confirms how utterly shameless both men are.