Bertie Ahern: The Man Who Blew the Boom: Power & Money (17 page)

The intensive canvassing and the work since 1977 paid off. Ahern topped the poll, winning almost 19 per cent of the first-preference votes. By comparison, Colley garnered only 6.8 per cent. Nationally, Fianna Fáil failed to get enough deputies returned to remain in Government. The national focus was understandably on the outcome of the election and the formation of a new Government, but there was still time for the media, and those in politics, to register Colley’s humiliation at being elected after his young constituency colleague. Duffy said he had mixed feelings about this.

We were really surprised. We were a bit shocked that we did so well and that poor old George Colley had been defeated. It was sort of a bitter taste, in a way. We recognised he was a good man, and it was shocking, and you could only imagine being on the far side . . . but I think everyone in the country knew then that this guy, Bertie Ahern, had something special. So I think that really brought Bertie to national political prominence for the first time.

The early 1980s was a period of great political turmoil. The oil crisis had combined with Fianna Fáil’s 1977 budget strategy to create a noxious economic mix. The public finances and the economy became the core of political debate. There was a whiff of sulphur about Haughey, who many distrusted because of his unexplained wealth, the Arms Trial and what Garret FitzGerald of Fine Gael called, with an unfortunate choice of words, his ‘flawed pedigree’. Haughey would be a divisive figure in the party, and in society generally, during his entire period as party leader, but Ahern managed to position himself solidly in the Haughey camp without creating any animosity in the anti-Haughey wing of the party, or indeed more generally. This achievement can be attributed to his affability, to his apparent modesty and to the care he took to avoid confrontation. His focus was on getting on, and during his first period in the Dáil he made some progress in that regard.

About a week after Haughey’s elevation to the position of Taoiseach in December 1979, Ahern was appointed as his party’s deputy chief whip. Soon afterwards the chief whip, Seán Moore, fell ill, so Ahern became the
de facto
chief whip. The post involves ensuring that party members are present for votes in the Dáil—a considerably more difficult job in the era before mobile phones. Ahern also had to compile regular reports for the parliamentary party, have frequent contacts with Government ministers and talk regularly to Haughey. The latter began to refer to Ahern as ‘the kid’.

Haughey called an election for June 1981, and it turned out to be the first of three general elections within eighteen months. Ahern and his supporters fought all three, and his vote-winning record was further enhanced with each poll.

It was about this time that Ahern and his supporters launched a programme they later referred to as ‘Operation Dublin’. According to Royston Brady, a former Ahern ward boss and one-time European Parliament candidate for Dublin, the exercise involved seizing control of some cumainn that were not particularly active and the closing down of cumainn that were particularly inactive. The exercise in Dublin Central resulted in a situation where the bulk of the party organisation came under Ahern’s control. ‘If you weren’t willing to play ball, you were gotten rid of, whether you were staunch Fianna Fáil or whether you weren’t,’ Brady said. ‘That didn’t come into it.’ Ahern disputes this analysis in his memoirs, though a similar picture was described by some of Ahern’s inner circle in the ‘Bertie’ televsision documentary.

Gerald Kenny’s recollection is that Ahern organised the cumainn so that they favoured his position.

We were joined with O’Donovan Rossa, and the MacEntee-Cusack Cumann based around the markets and formerly in the control of Tom Leonard
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. Leonard had been gifted the seat at a convention, instead of Mary Colley. The three cumainn were to come together. I got [the] position of chairman. The secretary and the chairman essentially run a cumann. Tony Kett got secretary. That meant there was no position for MacEntee-Cusack, and they walked out
en masse
.

Joe Tierney said that, while the reorganisation was presented as a citywide exercise, the focus was in fact on Dublin Central, where he and others had resisted the efforts of Haughey and Ahern to impose John Stafford as an election candidate in the 1983 by-election caused by Colley’s death. Haughey, he said, turned into a ‘raging lunatic’ when the local organisation thwarted his efforts, which were supported by Ahern. Then, in the 1985 local elections, the organisation put in a Moore Street trader called Ernie Beggs rather than Ahern, who had to be added to the ticket by the National Executive. At the end of Operation Dublin ‘they had wiped out 16 cumainn and taken control away from me. By me I mean the organisation. He [Ahern] didn’t reorganise anything. He just wiped them out.’

Kenny said he thought he might be able to rectify matters afterwards with disaffected party members, but it didn’t turn out to be the case.

So they effectively locked out a bunch of ardent and absolute Fianna Fáil loyalists, and it was just ‘Who cares?’ These were genuine, authentic people—people who were in the party because they thought the party was good for the country. And they were even insulted. Battle stories were told about how cutely it was done. It was totally ruthless and was geared towards garnering power as quickly as possible. There was to be no opposition.

The February 1982 election, which saw Fianna Fáil under Charles Haughey return to power, led to Ahern being appointed Government chief whip. For the first time he was on the inside track in Leinster House. His memoirs make it clear how much he enjoyed knowing more than his colleagues in the party about what was going on. He had to work with his own party, with the Workers’ Party, which was supporting the Government, and with the independents, who included a constituency rival, Tony Gregory.

Ahern was highly suited to the position of chief whip, according to the former Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte.

He was ideal. He had all the skills that were needed for that position. He was diplomatic, reticent, he was underspoken, he would keep the lads in line without being dictatorial or lacking understanding of their problems. He was a very emollient face for the media during a turbulent time in the party’s history. I can’t envisage anyone else going out to the media and being asked how many voted against Haughey [at a parliamentary party vote on his leadership] and saying, ‘I don’t know, I had my head down taking the minutes.’ I mean, no-one else could get away with that kind of thing. He would phone Seán Barrett as the Fine Gael chief whip and they’d meet over two pints of Bass, and they’d fix the business for the next week in the bar, and Bertie would be manoeuvring and so on. Very often I found in my dealings with him that I came out second best, and I would only find out afterwards. You never quite knew what he was looking for when he asked to see you, but you’d find out four weeks later.

The Haughey Government soon fell, and in November 1982 there was another general election. Ahern won twice as many first preferences as Colley, who was elected after the distribution of Ahern’s surplus. Garret FitzGerald formed a coalition with the Labour Party, and Fianna Fáil found itself in opposition. Ahern, by now acknowledged as a close associate of Haughey’s, was appointed party chief whip and spokesperson on labour affairs, a position that saw him ‘marking’ Ruairí Quinn. Ahern was a
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and Dublin City councillor, a senior figure within the party organisation and a poll-topping politician with a constituency machine to rival the best in the land. He was probably the first Irish politician to make canvassing a permanent activity, not just something that occurred when an election was called. This was to mark the entirety of his political career, firstly at the constituency level but subsequently on a national basis.

As well as being involved in the 1981 and 1982 general elections, Ahern was also involved in a by-election in 1983, though not as a candidate. George Colley died of a heart attack in September 1983, so a by-election had to be held in Dublin Central. A number of deputies died at about this time, including Brian Cowen’s father, Ber Cowen, and Ahern later said this was probably to some extent attributable to the stress created by all the political upheavals. There was great tension in the party, with passionate disagreements between those who supported Haughey and those who felt that he was unfit for office. Those who opposed Haughey wanted the candidate in the by-election to be Colley’s widow, Mary Colley, while Haughey wanted the candidate to be a local businessman, John Stafford. Neither one was eventually selected, with Ahern arguing that putting either candidate forward would simply focus the poll on the divisions that existed within the party. He was in favour of another candidate, Tom Leonard, whom, he argued, the party could unite behind.

Paddy Duffy has a different take on the matter. He said that he, Joe Burke and Chris Wall, having been tutored well by Ahern, met Haughey to discuss the matter, but the reasons put forward to Haughey were not the real ones motivating Ahern and his supporters.

We persuaded him that Tom Leonard was the man, because we wanted a weaker candidate, one we could control, and very reluctantly Haughey agreed, and we went down to Kennedy’s [pub in Drumcondra] afterwards, and we were all standing round. Tony Kett was there as well, and Haughey said, ‘Give the lads a drink,’ and we all had a pint; and then afterwards, because Haughey would only have one drink, Haughey said, ‘I don’t appear to have any money. Here, Bertie, look after that.’

It was after this failure to have his will imposed on the constituency organisation that Haughey began to refer to Ahern and his supporters as the Drumcondra Mafia.

The Clontarf Fine Gael
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Richard Bruton was working for his party’s candidate, Mary Banotti, during the by-election. He said Leonard was ‘a decent skin’ but was never a serious contender for a successful political career. Ahern never liked competitors close to him in his constituency, Bruton believes. ‘He followed the old adage that the greatest threat to a sheep was the sheep grazing beside him. He never had any competitive sheep in the same pasture as him!’

Leonard polled very well and won the seat. However, he was never a threat to Ahern’s dominance of the constituency and did not contest the 1987 general election, in which Dr Dermot Fitzpatrick was elected as the second Fianna Fáil
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in the constituency.

As part of his consolidation of his political position, Ahern during these years also established a fund-raising network. The unprecedented series of general elections put a severe strain on the finances of all politicians and political parties. According to Duffy, it was in the early 1980s that people like Des Richardson and Tim Collins, figures who became important money-men in the Ahern organisation, appeared on the scene, though he said he is not clear on the details. Celia Larkin, a full-time civil servant, also got involved. More ambitious fund-raising activities got under way, and a full-time constituency office for Ahern was opened over Fagan’s pub, close to Drumcondra Bridge on the Tolka.

Strangely, there were two parallel financial structures in the constituency: one involved the local elected officers of the party, who came through, and belonged to, the Dublin Central cumann and comhairle structure; the other involved Collins and Richardson, and much larger sums of money. Not only were Richardson and Collins not elected officers of the constituency, accountable to the constituency organisation, they were not even members of the party. They nevertheless became involved in the running of the finances of Ahern’s Dublin Central organisation, which soon became the best-funded constituency organisation in the country. Duffy says:

In some ways in Bertie’s life there were slightly different circles. The people I have mentioned were there from the beginning. Our remit was to always talk politics. Later on there was another, connected circle, in a different context, and that would include Des, Tim Collins; Joe Burke would probably have been in that as well—a business or sort of financial side. But the two of those [circles] never met. There was no connection between the two of them.

Some members of the various factions in Ahern’s set-up were also involved in his social life, which mainly centred on pubs in Drumcondra and Beaumont. Ward bosses, such as the two Paddy Reillys, and key supporters, such as Kitt, Burke and, later, Dermot Carew, would meet Ahern socially in these pubs. Richardson rarely joined them, according to Duffy, who himself had a young family and other interests and also rarely went to the pub with Ahern.

The Labour Party deputy Joan Burton, whose Dublin West constituency adjoins Ahern’s, believes that Ahern was good at asking for money. At the time, political fund-raising was almost entirely unregulated, and Ahern would have been keenly aware of the importance of a war chest in the battle for electoral success. According to Royston Brady, each ward boss was in charge of raising funds from potential targets in their own area, but a percentage would have to be forwarded to Ahern’s constituency operation.

Burton emphasised another aspect of political fund-raising: the effect it has on a politician’s self-esteem.

It is a huge boost to any politician when a range of people come forward and give money. In a way it doesn’t matter if it’s ten euro or ten thousand, but obviously if it is ten thousand . . . There is no politician on earth who is not flattered by people coming forward and saying I would like to support you.

You have this intense sense, in Fianna Fáil, that ‘We are the business, we are doing the business,’ and I think he [Ahern] was very good at that. I think he learned that at the hands of Haughey, and I think he was ruthless about doing it—letting people know that money was expected. I would say he made it very clear that he expected [people] to contribute handsomely.

The decision to open the office above Fagan’s was taken despite the fact that the party had a building in Amiens Street which was available to Ahern and other party figures from his and nearby constituencies. It had been in the party’s ownership for decades. Royston Brady’s father, Ray, a taxi-driver who also played music in pubs, got to know Ahern in the early 1980s and became one of his key supporters. On Saturday mornings Ray Brady would usher in the waiting constituents to see Ahern in an office in the Amiens Street building, and it was at the end of one such morning that Royston Brady, then in his early teens, was first introduced to Ahern. A number of members of the Brady family became Ahern supporters. Royston’s brother Cyprian ran Ahern’s constituency office for twenty years, was appointed to the Seanad by Ahern in 2002 and was elected a
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in Ahern’s constituency in 2007. He was elected on Ahern’s transfers. A sister also worked in St Luke’s.