Ex-Taoiseach's three China visits this year

FORMER TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern has visited China three times this year, according to the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs in Beijing.

The institute’s website says Mr Ahern visited from March 19th to 22nd, April 26th to 30th and July 12th to 17th this year. He travelled as guest of the institute in March and met senior figures in Shanghai and elsewhere.

He returned again as guest of the institute in April and met Lou Jiwei, chairman and chief executive of the China Investment Group, a sovereign wealth fund. He also met the secretary of the Communist Party in Anhui Province, Zang Baoshun.

In July, again as guest of the institute, he visited Beijing, Anhui and Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province. The institute’s website said on this trip Mr Ahern attended the signing ceremony of a “letter of intent of friendly co-operation and exchanges between Chaoyang District government and the Ireland-China Co-operation Council”. On the same trip he attended a ceremony where an exchange agreement was signed between Beijing International Studies University and Dublin Institute of Technology.

A photograph on the website accompanying the entry covering this visit shows Mr Ahern and some unidentified Chinese individuals with Dominic Dillane, Fianna Fáil treasurer for Dublin Central, and former Fianna Fáil TD for the constituency Cyprian Brady.

In Guiyang, Mr Ahern delivered a speech to a conference on “eco-civilisation” as did Mr Dillane, who is a statistics lecturer at the DIT and a director of Tourism Ireland.

China Daily reported Mr Ahern as saying dirty industries that existed in Ireland 20 years ago had not become clean overnight. “It will take time, but you are doing the right job here,” he said.

Mr Dillane was reported as telling the conference, attended by more than 600 scientists and officials, that the Irish climate was to some extent like that of Guiyang.

The Anhuinews website said during Mr Ahern’s trip to the province in April the party chief, Mr Zhang, praised his “unremitting promotion of Sino-Ireland ties”.

The report said the Irish delegation was “sent by the Ireland-China Co-operation Council, an organisation established in 2009 and dedicated to the promotion of understanding and partnership between Ireland and China”. It said the “Irish delegation” was to sign an investment memorandum on co-establishing a European industrial park with the Jiangbei Industrial Centralisation Zone.

Efforts to contact Mr Dillane were not successful. Mr Dillane is a director of the Council for Irish Chinese Co-operation, an Irish registered company with no share capital incorporated in 2009.

A second director is Howard Brady, a brother of Cyprian Brady and a Dublin barman.

The two other directors are Chinese businessmen Bohua Fu and Danjing Wen, both with addresses on Mountjoy Street, Dublin.

The latest accounts for the company, for the 2010 calendar year, say the principal activity of the company is to introduce businesses to the Chinese market.

The company had income of €50,000 during the year, and administrative expenses of €51,735, leaving it with negative reserves at the year’s end of €1,735. The company’s registered address is that of Mr Brady’s home on Parnell Street, Dublin.

Former Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson is understood to have travelled with Mr Ahern to China earlier this year.

Mr Ahern, chairman of the International Forestry Fund, headed a delegation from the fund to Beijing last year which met officials from the China Investment Corporation. There have been reports the fund would be interested in buying Coillte, the Irish forestry authority.