Turning points for a taoiseach

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Bertie Ahern may not have put his Mahon Tribunal dealings at the centre of his autobiography but fury towards his interrogators is there in spades

Bertie Ahern: The Autobiography By Bertie Ahern with Richard Aldous Hutchinson, 372 pp. £20

IN THE EYES of some, Bertie Ahern would use his autobiography to state the case for the defence in advance of the Mahon Tribunal’s report, which is now probably not going to emerge until the New Year. And it does: he worked hard; had Ireland’s best interests at heart; was the primary creator of social partnership; co-led the efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland and healed decades of division within Fianna Fáil.

In the event, however, references to his financial affairs that formed the centre-piece of much of the tribunal’s work over a decade, and that led to his downfall are noticeable almost by their absence.

There is no mention of Michael Wall and the now infamous Manchester dinner, where he said he was given £8,000. Nor do the so-called “dig-out” payments, said by him to have been given in the early 1990s, feature.

Nor is there any mention of the Byzantine series of lodgements and withdrawals that marked much of his evidence before the Dublin Castle tribunal; but Ahern’s fury towards his interrogators is there in spades.

In his telling, his former secretary, Gráinne Carruth, was treated abominably by tribunal lawyers when she broke down on the witness stand. It was, he says, “a turning point for me”.

It was a turning point for many others, as well, but for different reasons. He makes no mention of why she broke down. Carruth had sworn that she had never handled sterling for Ahern.

However, the tribunal had found £15,000 sterling lodgements. Warned that it was a criminal offence to lie, Carruth erupted into tears, and acknowledged that “on the balance of probability” she had made the lodgements.

THE SELF-PERPETUATED IMAGEof a man brought down by pygmies is evident throughout the 370 pages of Bertie Ahern, The Autobiography, co-written with academic Richard Aldous.

“The Opposition could not beat me fair and square in a general election, so it was time to play dirty instead,” writes Ahern, adding that he was disappointed that they used his personal affairs for political gain. “They condemned me because I had only partial recollection of events in my life almost two decades previously, and yet here was a party that had conveniently destroyed its own financial records,” he goes on.

Drumcondra is everywhere: his upbringing, his relationship with his parents, his pride in and love for his home-patch, and it is a part of the book that is well told, and clearly heartfelt.

Throughout his extraordinary political career, one that was marked by some achievements that will live long after him, Ahern usually kept his own counsel about many of the people he encountered.

“I always learnt to watch first, get my bearings and try not to attract too much in the way of attention. Then when I had got the lie of the land, I would have my say,” he says early on.

Having travelled the land, he displays no similar hesitation here.

George Colley’s patrician airs annoyed him: “Somehow, though, when I talked to Colley I always had the feeling that he was looking down on me and thought I needed to show more respect to him as a Fianna Fáil die-hard.”

Pádraig Flynn’s attack on Mary Robinson in the latter stages of the 1990 presidential campaign – after Brian Lenihan had been sacked by Charles Haughey from cabinet – cost Lenihan the election, he writes.

Following Lenihan’s sacking, Ahern argues convincingly that the tide had swung towards him: “What we absolutely did not need was Pádraig Flynn putting his foot in his mouth.”

His bitterness – justifiable, it must be said – towards those in Fianna Fáil who sought to gain advantage from the break-up of his marriage to Miriam and his relationship with Celia Larkin oozes from the pages.

Former cabinet minister Michael Smith, who observed, when it looked like Ahern would battle Albert Reynolds for the Fianna Fáil leadership after Haughey’s departure, that Reynolds’ happy marital life was the envy of other politicians, does not escape.

Quoting Pat Rabbitte’s famous line that Smith was “droning on like a Monsignor on a bad line from Medjugorje”, Ahern is dismissive of the former Tipperary North TD: “I never had much to do with Smith, and he wasn’t a friend of mine.”

Defending his decision not to challenge Reynolds on that occasion, he argues that he had never campaigned for it; but then goes on to argue that he would have had the votes to win if he had done so.

His analysis of Reynolds in government is sound: that the latter failed to run a successful coalition because he came from a business background and was used “to giving orders and people following them”.

On the British front, his friendship with Tony Blair is evident throughout; as is his professional contempt for the man who was chancellor during the Black Wednesday ERM crisis, Norman Lamont.

Lamont was “out of his depth”, “didn’t have the first idea about how to get consensus”, and displayed “inflexibility and lack of leadership”. He is not the only politician to be criticised for failing to prepare, prepare, prepare. Peter Mandelson he simply disliked.

The section in the book dealing with Ireland’s devaluation of the punt in early 1993 is one of the most fascinating in the book, particularly where it covers the back-room work in the days beforehand.

His anger towards the German Bundesbank over its failure to defend the punt, while at the same time showing no such reluctance to help the French franc, is evident, and clearly left an impression upon him.

The Germans, he said, “barely lifted a finger to help us. That was a painful lesson in EU politics – all economies are partners, but some partners are more equal than others”, he writes. However, the section suffers, as do others, from the fact that he clearly never kept a diary during his tumultuous career – understandable given other pressures, but a loss, nevertheless.

He remains perplexed about the collapse of the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition in 1994, a confusion undoubtedly shared 15 years on by those involved directly at the time and those who reported upon it.

Clearly, he believes that a key part was played by Dick Spring’s adviser, Fergus Finlay, whom Ahern accuses of looking down on Fianna Fáil and feeding Spring’s sensitivities rather than easing them.

Describing him as one who saw “himself as the moral conscience of the nation”, Ahern writes: “Finlay always looked uncomfortable dealing with us. He seemed on edge, so you never knew what he was saying to Dick. I don’t think I ever felt I could trust him.”

Throughout, Ahern’s self-image as one who played fair and played it straight comes through: “With me, what you saw was what you got.” That is not an image shared by those who found it difficult to read him, however.

His defence of his decision to appoint Ray Burke as minister for foreign affairs in his first government – one that quickly came to grief once the first evidence that the latter had received questionable, large donations – is forthright. Burke, he believes, has been unfair to him since, and blind to the political realities. So, too, is Reynolds for believing that he was shafted by him when Reynolds ran for Fianna Fáil’s presidential nomination in 1997.

Denying that he did any such thing, Ahern argues that Reynolds should understand that there are times in politics when you win and times when you lose. Sadly, Ahern fails to realise that the same rules applied to him when his own end came.

Mark Hennessy is London Editor ofThe Irish Times , and formerly the paper's Political Correspondent