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THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW: From the old fashioned sitting room of St Luke's, wielding homemade buns and disarming charm, Bertie Ahern vigorously defends his legacy - but if he had his time again, he'd do a lot of things differently.

IS THIS WHERE it ends? In a small upstairs sitting room in St Luke’s that has seen better days? The generously swagged curtains, the old-fashioned, pale-gold three-piece suite, the pieces of dark furniture all once aspired to a kind of glamour. Now they vie with a low sofa shrouded in a sheet, accessorised by a couple of fat, furry toys decked out in Dublin jerseys alongside their donkey pal in blue knicks with a soccer ball. Bronze figurines (the “appreciation” of choice) also feature in industrial quantities: wiry fiddlers, cheeky urchins swinging off lamp-posts, a busty Molly Malone wheeling her wheelbarrow towards the gas fire.