TRIBUNAL SKETCH:Bertie Ahern's interview with Bryan Dobson in September 2006 played on the emotions of the decent men and women of Ireland. It saved his bacon but was a sham, writes Miriam Lord.
IT WAS a Tuesday evening, September 26th, 2006, when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern gave that interview.
It was a powerful piece of television. Even at a remove of nearly two years, it remains etched in the memory of all those who watched it. And many, many people did.
There was much at stake. Bertie Ahern's political career was in the balance, and so too was Fianna Fáil's future in government. A general election wasn't far away, and Bertie, the party's prime electoral asset, was in deep trouble.
The Irish Timeshad run a story that he got €50,000 from businessmen when he was minister for finance. He couldn't deny it, because it was true.
Nor could he ignore the rising media and political clamour for an explanation.
In a make or break appearance on the RTÉ six o'clock news, he began the fightback. It was a high-risk strategy, but the master politician gambled on his reputation as a simple and honest man of the people, and on the fact that the public liked him.
He bypassed the Dáil, he bypassed the media and he made his pitch directly to the people. He asked for their understanding. He played on the emotions of the decent men and women of Ireland. He gambled right.
More fools us, as we discovered in the Mahon tribunal yesterday.
Let's go back to that interview. It's important.
Sure, it was wrong to take the money, he said. Sure, with hindsight he would have done things differently. But he had a story to tell - it pained him to have to do it, because it was very personal and embarrassing, but he had to clear the air.
"It's best that I just give the true facts and you know, from the position of the Irish public, they've always been kind to me about being separated. They've always been understanding and, em, if I've caused offence to anyone, I think I have to a few people, em, I'm sorry," he said.
He sat in St Luke's and told his difficult story to the nation. Eyes brimming with tears - for he is a proud man, swallowing hard, pausing now and then to regain his composure, he relived the "dark period" in his life.
He gave all the details, for "correctness" and "completeness". How, as part of his separation agreement, he agreed to provide €20,000 for his children's education. "I also had to pay off other bills, so the money I'd saved was gone. So my friends knew that. I had no house, the house was gone so they decided to try and help me."
God almighty, but it was terrible hard to watch. You could see the emotional turmoil Bertie, our Bertie, was going through, having to say this stuff in public about his marriage breaking up, having no roof over his head and strapped for cash in Christmas week.
His pals got together on two occasions and had whiparounds for him. They were "friends at a time of need when they knew I was in difficulty", said Bertie.
He said he wasn't "impoverished" at the time, but what does that mean? He wasn't on the dole, or unable to eat. But his solicitor knew of his financial situation and tried to do something to help him. "It's not for me to plead how hard my life was then . . ." said Ahern, having painted a picture of personal desolation.
What a performance. He bared his soul to the people, and they showed him compassion and understanding in return. Worse fools us.
He took advantage, pure and simple.
And in the tribunal witness box, Bertie Ahern tried to insist yesterday that in the Dobson interview he had not tried to put across the idea that he had been on his uppers. (Because, as has been shown in the last two days, and in Ahern's previous appearances, that was definitely not the case.) "I don't think that was the impression I gave," he told lawyer Des O'Neill.
"I made it clear to Mr Dobson that I wasn't impoverished after my separation . . . but I equally made it clear that I didn't own a home." O'Neill took the view that his interview gave the impression "he had been in straitened financial circumstances". Bertie didn't know where he got that impression from.
"We've been through this before," replied Bertie sulkily.
Deathly Des wondered if the former taoiseach, in that emotional interview, had been seeking to "create the impression" of "financial impecuniosity" in order to justify getting payments?
"I don't think, I mean, I haven't looked at this for a while," mumbled Bertie.
And this after a morning of farcical evidence about him routinely carrying around a "float" of a few thousand pounds in his hip pocket when he went over on a trip to Manchester. Of how he didn't think it "a significant" amount of money to be carting about on his person in the early 1990s.
How he, as minister for finance, was using his millionaire pal (deceased) in England as a bureau de change. How he was thinking of buying himself a pad in Salford - a two-bedroom house or "mewses" property - as an investment. How he changed £30,000 into sterling in one transaction, but didn't do it himself and can't remember who ran the financial errand for him. How he was betting on the horses in England and homeless in Ireland.
It's ridiculous. And Bertie knows it.
But the worst thing of all is that he used the public, his public, to get himself out of a tight spot. And now he's denying the import of what he said.
That interview, the one that saved his bacon, was a sham.
Worse fools us.