Bertie is back, but Fianna Fáil members say presidential run a ‘fairytale’

The Goose Tavern in Drumcondra is a classic suburban pub, nestled in the warren of residential roads off Griffith Avenue. On one of the walls – near the gents – there’s a painting of a goose that has laid a golden egg. Running down the egg are two cracks, and in the bottom right-hand corner, daubed in yellow paint, there’s a signature: B. AHERN.

Niall Newman, the main shareholder in the pub, remembers how he bought it. The then taoiseach, he says, had been asked by a newspaper to paint something for charity. He enlisted the help of a local artist, and would go to her house to work on it with her. “He’d go up and spend time dabbing away,” Newman recalls. The pub bought it at auction for around €150.

Ahern still drinks there, sometimes standing for photographs with the picture. “It’ll be worth a lot of money when he becomes president,” jokes Newman. “Bertie’s looking for the main prize!”

The former taoiseach’s return to Fianna Fáil has been welcomed within the party. He had been attending party events, giving advice, especially on the North, and to election candidates – “that local graft and how you do it,” recalls one sitting TD. “This has been a long time coming,” another party source says.

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Bertie Ahern’s return is par for the course for Fianna Fáil, a party that frequently rejects history

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His role in striking the Belfast Agreement meant it would have been an awkward distraction for him to be outside the tent for the 25th anniversary – and “unnecessarily cruel to embarrass the man”, a member of the parliamentary party says. “How can Fianna Fáil try to assert itself and encourage loyalists, unionists, nationalists and the British to move forward… if we are not willing to move forward as well?”

[ Bertie Ahern’s evidence to Mahon tribunal was ‘at a particular point in time’, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says ]

Micheál Martin, one TD says, “needs him on the North”, where he can be a “valuable asset (with) the kind of ‘in’ that Micheál doesn’t have”. His role as a grandee, and as a living bridge to the political generation of the agreement, may prove invaluable, one Minister believes, if there is any change in the structures in the North.

There is also a visceral connection to the remarkable electoral success of the Ahern era: his return, one source said, “reminds us of the days when we truly dominated Irish political life”.

However, there is less comfort with the idea of Ahern coming onto the electoral pitch. Few Fianna Fáilers want to be explaining the findings of the Mahon tribunal, or equivocating over the economic collapse when talking to voters. There’s also a cold hard logic about how useful his standing on the Good Friday agreement is. “How valuable is that in an election when people are worried about housing, crime, education?”

[ Drumcondra deeply divided over Bertie’s return ]

There are nerves among TDs and Senators when it comes to the idea of a tilt at the park. Some believe he is being outright mischievous: “He’s just having the craic,” opines one TD. “I’d have definite difficulty backing him for a presidential election,” says another. “I just feel we need to move on, look for someone who would be less divisive.”

“We know how presidential elections are run, and the brutality of them,” says another. “There’s a lot of support for him being in the party. I think him running for the Áras would be a different question”; the idea is a “fairytale”, says a fourth.

Knowing that Ahern’s baggage would be fair game – and centre stage not only for him, but for the party, provokes a nervous reaction. “We need to convince a section of the electorate that Fianna Fáil is a party for the future and they’re not excited to be voting for politicians of the past,” says a party source. And as for the parliamentary party backing a bid? “They don’t harbour any ill-will towards him, but they’re f**ked if they’re going to screw their own careers for him.”