Why Bertie Ahern Won't Be Our Next President.

Bertie was the Tabloid Taoiseach.

Imagine, if you will, a politician who can’t tell the truth about where hundreds of thousands of (Irish) pounds in cash came from but insists, with all the earnestness of a child denying he ate the last biscuit, that it was all just “dig-outs” and loans from friends. That politician is Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach of Ireland, and according to the Mahon Tribunal, he gave a masterclass in obfuscation and double-speak. To the media and the Irish public, he displayed the kind of moral bankruptcy that would make a pre-crash banker blush. But some in Fianna Fáil would still back Bertie for the Presidency.

Bertie’s relationship with Fianna Fáil leader Michéal Martin is complicated.

Bertie Ahern and Michéal Martin have known each other for 40 years and, between the two of them, have ruled over Fianna Fáil for over 27 years. Bertie once replaced Micheál Martin with Michael Woods in the Department of Education. Woods, a politician, was almost impossible to underestimate, and that will tell you all you need to know about how highly Bertie rated Micheál Martin. Although some political anoraks will tell you Bertie recognised Micheál Martin as a threat to him as far back as 2000, and that’s why he demoted him

In 2012, Fianna Fáil moved to expel Bertie Ahern for conduct unbecoming of a member of the party. Bertie resigned before he was expelled, saying his decision to leave Fianna Fáil was a “political” move rather than an admission that he had lied about his past finances. Ahern was on the brink of being thrown out of the party he led to three successive general election victories. In 2014, Bertie said of Micheál Martin, “I don't think much of the leader, I think you all know that. I'm not going to say anything nice about him.” So what are the chances of Michéal Martin backing Bertie for the Presidency? Micheál Martin would have to engage in Olympian levels of mental gymnastics to justify his backing of Bertie for President when he previously wanted to drop-kick him into the River Liffey from the top of Liberty Hall. You can’t be looking to expel someone from your party for failure to adequaetly explain the sources of his finances and then back him to be our next president. There’s a word for that.

The Mahon Tribunal

The Mahon Tribunal, a gargantuan 917-day investigation into the murkier corners of Irish politics, found Bertie Ahern’s explanations for more than IR£165,000 passing through his accounts to be outright fabrications. Bertie told tale after tale—“whip-arounds” at dinners, loans from generous pals, and winning money on the horses, but the tribunal’s judges saw through Bertie’s obsfuscations. Among the most absurd were the claims he received an £8,000 whip-around at a Manchester dinner party and an IR£16,500 loan, which, surprise, surprise, turned out to be bundled into a tidy cash pile of mysterious origin that Ahern never satisfactorily explained.

Then there was the day Bertie’s loyal secretary, Ms. Gráinne Carruth, took the witness box in the Mahon Tribunal—one of those moments so unforgettably awful that the whole country turned on Bertie. Here’s a woman who was paid a miserly sum of £66 a week, thrust with trembling hands onto the stand to prop up the Taoiseach’s tall tales about his bank accounts, only to have both her dignity and his defence collapse in front of the nation.

With all the subtlety of wrenching a confession from a small child, the legal questioning forced Carruth—loyal to a fault—to try and back up Bertie’s claims that only wages cheques ever made their way into his accounts. Under cross-examination, with documentary proof shoved under her nose, her story unravelled as brutally as Bertie’s sense of decency. The poor woman broke down, weeping openly, admitting that yes, she had lodged the infamous sterling—the same cash Bertie had sworn blind was nothing of the sort.

Carruth, blindsided and abandoned, was left to face the tribunal's withering stare and the public’s boiling condemnation. The sterling that tumbled into Bertie’s account didn’t just torch his credibility; it proved the only thing Ahern’s financial evidence had ever rested on was a secretary’s shattered trust and the willingness to hide behind her tears. You’d have needed a heart of stone not to feel sorry for Carruth. And yet, watching how Bertie treated Carruth—his “loyal” staffer—as expendable political fodder in his personal financial cover-up, you realise: this is a politician who cared little for the people who worked for him.

Fianna Fáil, take note: this is the legacy you want to rally behind? Spare us the lectures on loyalty and presidential leadership when your Bertie hero cowers behind a secretary who was paid £66 and waves her on toward the legal lion’s den. There’s another word for that. Coward. Grainne wept openly as she begged the judge to let her return home to her children. She triggered an enormous wave of sympathy for the predicament many felt Bertie had placed her in. Ms Carruth sobbed as her attempts to prop up the Taoiseach’s sworn testimony that only wages cheques had gone into his accounts crumbled as readily as her own previous statements on the matter. She left the witness box looking for all the world like a broken woman, crushed under the weight of her loyalty to a former boss who cared nothing for her. “I’m hurt, I’m hurt, and I’m upset. I just want to go home,” she lamented.

More Mahon Mistruths

We’re supposed to believe that Bertie Ahern’s solicitor, the late Gerry Brennan—a man with actual professional qualifications, neckties, and, presumably, a functioning brain—spent his afternoons rattling the poor man’s cup among Bertie’s circle of friends? “Sorry to bother you, but our esteemed Taoiseach needs a few bob for legal fees.”

All this—remember—in full knowledge that Bertie had already arranged a bank loan to cover said fees, and, oh yes, was sitting on £54,000 in mystery cash stuffed under his mattress, or lurking in some far-flung duffel bag. That’s not just creative accounting—it’s the plot of a Guy Ritchie movie, only with Dublin accents. We’re asked to believe that this well-heeled solicitor—who probably charged by the shocked expression—was out collecting money so Bertie could… pay him?

The Finance Minister with no bank account.

In the world according to Bertie Ahern, you don’t need a bank account—apparently, the laws of finance, like the ones regarding gravity or honesty, simply don’t apply in Drumcondra. There he sits, the Minister for Finance, lord of all he surveys, explaining to the Mahon Tribunal with a straight face that, between 1987 and 1993, he didn’t have a single bank account. A fellow piloting the nation’s treasury decided the best place for his money was certainly not a bank. Bertie’s grand defence? “There’s nothing in the law or the Constitution that says you need a bank account!” Most of us would think a fella running the Treasury might want to set the bar slightly higher. But not Bertie! For him, saving up a sum equivalent to €125,000 in random cash over seven years—on a minister’s salary, was just “ordinary people stuff.”

Bertie’s evidence wasn’t just a house of cards; it was a bouncy castle of bullshit, and the only thing more mind-boggling than his story is that anyone, anywhere, still expects us to keep a straight face. Bertie Ahern, ladies and gentlemen, refused to be held accountable for money that trickled and gushed through his hands. The Tribunal called his stories “untrue” and dismissed his financial murkiness as damaging to the public trust. This isn’t a case of a little white lie — this is a blatant failure to uphold the basic decency we expect before handing someone the reins of power.

His legacy? Once a man of historic triumphs, lauded for his role in the peace process in Northern Ireland, he is now best remembered as the poster boy for political corruption. His resignation as Taoiseach in 2008 and his proposed expulsion from Fianna Fáil in 2012 for “conduct unbecoming” was a belated Fianna Fáil nod to a scandal too glaring to ignore.

The question remains: how can any party worth its salt continue to back a man whose actions, as the media at the time called him a “liar”, shattered the trust placed in public office? How can anyone seriously entertain the idea of Bertie Ahern on the political stage again after this?

Leo Varadkar said in the Dáil of Bertie’s evidence at the Mahon Tribunal

“A former Taoiseach has gone into the tribunal and essentially given the ‘John Gilligan defence’ that he won the money on horses. This is a defence for drug dealers and pimps and not the kind of thing that should be tolerated from a former Taoiseach and member of this house.”

There’s a whole generation of Irish voters, 40 and up, with traumatised bank accounts and mortgage PTSD, for whom the very mention of Bertie Ahern brings on a rash. These are the people who actually show up at the polling booth. If Bertie even dreams of a comeback, you can bet they’ll respond in the same way an allergy sufferer reacts to peanuts: sudden, severe, and with a trip to the polls to make sure he never gets near the levers of power again. Remember when Bertie wondered why some people didn’t kill themselves for talking down the economy when it became clear there was something very wrong with the economy?

“Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing, and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide.” - Bertie Ahern, 2007.

And for the young folks? The Bertie tapes—yes, those 5,000 hours of laugh/cringe-out-loud video evidence from the Mahon Tribunal and the heart-wrenching performance of his secretary, sobbing on the stand—are primed for Social media. #releaseThebertietapes will trend so hard that even the dinosaurs backing Bertie in Fianna Fáil will hear it.

It’s all there in the Mahon Tribunal video evidence, the forgotten funds, the vanished memory, the friends who suddenly realised they could barely remember their own names—never mind the envelope full of cash. The only thing more farcical than Bertie’s explanations is the loyalty of those willing to believe them.

Only in Ireland, and only still in some elements of Fianna Fáil, could you find a crowd of stalwart loyalists squinting into the harsh light of day and calling it moonshine, insisting Bertie’s “unexplained” cash mountains were just his creative accounting skills and a misunderstood act of public service. You’d see them, straight-faced, earnestly defending the man as if stuffing mystery envelopes of sterling into your wage account is as Irish as a pint of Guinness. For these folks, when Bertie swore in front of a tribunal that it was all above board, that’s all the evidence required—because honesty, like Guinness, is apparently best served with plenty of head.

The only place more forgiving than the Vatican after confession is the Fianna Fáil party room in Dáil Eireann. Every evasive answer, every teary loyal secretary tossed to the wolves is just the cost of doing business in Irish Politics. “Sure, haven’t we all got a few grand down the back of the couch, and didn’t we all pay it in with the help of a sobbing secretary who’s just dying to get home to her kids?”

In the cynical theatre of Irish politics, perhaps anything is possible, but if Fianna Fáil truly believes in honesty, transparency, and moral leadership, then Bertie Ahern’s name should be etched firmly in the “never again” department of Irish politics. Instead, some clamour on, turning a blind eye to the glaring moral failures and the absence of his credible explanations.

At some point, one hopes, reason and sanity will prevail over loyalty to the tainted past. Because with a legacy of secrecy, dodgy lodgements, and outright lies, Bertie Ahern is a case study in why some people should simply never be allowed to run for office again.

Speaking in 2012, Bertie said about resigning from Fianna Fáil: “I have tendered my resignation because I do not want a debate about me to become a source of division in Fianna Fáil.” 13 years later, he’s still a source of division not just in Fianna Fáil, but for the whole nation.