Bertie Ahern: The Man Who Blew the Boom: Power & Money (20 page)

In 1997, the year Ahern became Taoiseach for the first time, Richardson and Dunlop went into business together. According to Richardson, Dunlop suggested that they sign a one-year contract that would involve Richardson using the contacts he had made to find clients for Dunlop’s
PR
business. Richardson invoiced Dunlop for his contributions, using Berraway, even though Dunlop was a registered shareholder in Berraway. Richardson told the tribunal that he did not know how Dunlop ever became registered as a shareholder. During 1998 Richardson and Dunlop were meeting each other almost weekly, the tribunal was told. By this stage the tribunal was established, but, as Dunlop later told it, he was sceptical of its ability to expose corruption.

Berraway was dissolved in 1999, about the time Dunlop first disclosed to the Flood Tribunal (as it was then called) that he had been involved in a series of corrupt payments to councillors on behalf of a range of clients over an extended period. Naturally, his lobbying business collapsed. According to a report in the
Sunday Business Post
in 2000 by its former editor Tim Harding, more than €1 million passed through the Berraway account between 1996 and 2000. The funds appear to have arisen from payments from clients rather than from profits arising from any business ventures.

In December 2007, when Ahern was still Taoiseach and the tribunal was conducting public hearings into his finances, I wrote an article in the
Irish Times
about this web of relationships involving Dunlop, Richardson, Ahern and Collins. I was prompted to do so because Dunlop had mentioned in evidence how he had had regular contact with Ahern during Ahern’s time as a minister and Taoiseach. He would call Ahern, and Ahern would call him. Dunlop would introduce clients to Ahern and discuss with him matters of concern to Dunlop’s clients. ‘Bertie would go out of his way on some occasions to facilitate any requests I made of him,’ Dunlop said.

I wrote about these links because of what Dunlop had disclosed about his long-time engagement in corruption, because of his business dealings with Richardson and because of the roles played by Richardson and Collins in the money side of Ahern’s political career and the whole unhappy question of legitimate political fund-raising. The morning the piece appeared, Dunlop came up to me at the press table before the start of that day’s evidence and mentioned the article. He seemed annoyed. ‘So it’s not okay to have friends now, is it not?’ he said, or words to that effect. I said Ahern must have been very surprised when he found out what Dunlop had been up to over all those years. That seemed to deflate any annoyance Dunlop was feeling. He laughed and walked to the witness box. When he got there he paused, looked back at me, smiled, and then entered the box to give his morning’s evidence.

By the time Ahern had become minister, Gerald Kenny was running a small and not particularly successful security firm while also being an active member of Fianna Fáil in Ahern’s constituency. A year or so after Ahern had first been elected as a deputy, Kenny had met Ahern at Ahern’s request in a pub near the Botanic Gardens. Ahern, he said, talked to him about his business, which was not doing as well as Kenny pretended it was.

As far as I was concerned, Ahern was Haughey. I was of a different persuasion [a Colley supporter], but Ahern is a very easy guy to get on with. We met in the Tolka House. I didn’t really have a clue what he was talking about. He was telling me that what he was earning between the Dáil and the Mater Hospital wasn’t really enough to pay his bills, his mortgage, the expenses of the constituency, and so on. But actually he was asking if I was interested in his being a consultant, a business consultant, to my company, and I was saying, ‘What would I need a consultant for? I have a mickey-mouse business.’

Nothing came of the suggestion. However, after Ahern was appointed Minister for Labour, Kenny’s business was again raised. According to Kenny, Ahern told him there were a lot of security contracts available in agencies that reported to his department.

He rang me and we met. I can’t remember where, it could have been the Tolka again. Later on I know I met him in the Department of Labour in Mespil Road. We were on our own. He started going on about this, that and the other, and I remember him saying very strongly that if there is something going a Fianna Fáil man should get it. He proceeded to tell me that there were going to be security contracts available in
FÁS
, and he wanted to know if I would be interested. He said, ‘You’ll get the money, and I’ll get the jobs.’ In other words, whoever he sent to me would get the job. Electorally it made sense. Then he said, ‘What you need to do now is meet Paddy Duffy, and he will arrange how things will work out.’ Paddy is probably the shrewdest of them all. We didn’t know each other at this stage, but I got to know him later.

Kenny said he later met Duffy in the Skylon Hotel in Drumcondra. He was in the habit of giving the party about two hundred pounds a year, channelling it through his cumann so that it would get the benefit. His view was that if you were going to get involved in a political party you should be willing to contribute money to it. When he met Duffy he was expecting to be asked for an increased donation. Duffy discussed Ahern’s constituency operation with Kenny and outlined to him how difficult it was to fund it and how much money it cost. By the end of the conversation it was agreed that Kenny would give two thousand pounds a year. It was about twice the amount he had been expecting. He said he paid the money by taking out ten seats at a hundred pounds each at the annual Kilmainham dinner and giving the other thousand to one of Ahern’s close associates. He could not remember who but he thought it might have been Joe Burke.

Duffy, when asked about this meeting, said that he could not remember it and that it appeared unlikely. He said he had nothing to do with the Kilmainham dinners or the financing of the St Luke’s operation. His role was with policy and strategy matters associated with Ahern’s career. The people who were involved in running the financial side of Ahern’s operation had been clearly demarcated in the tribunal hearings, he said. ‘The structure was that the people who organised that whole area were clearly known, and nobody outside of that group had any hand, act or part in any of that.’

In relation to the
FÁS
issue Duffy said that there was very high unemployment at the time and that many people in Fianna Fáil and the other parties were asked for help. Ahern tried to help anyone who approached him in that regard. ‘Bertie would be well known for having worked hard, maybe harder than others, at trying to get people jobs, particularly at the lower level. Certainly I would have met a lot of those during my time—ushers and doormen, that sort of role—and they were very grateful.’

Kenny said his company, County Security Ltd, got a contract for supplying security to the
FÁS
offices in D’Olier House, D’Olier Street, opposite the former offices of the
Irish Times
. (D’Olier House is rented to the state by an Irish company that is in turn owned by a Cayman Islands trust set up by the property developer John Byrne, who was a long-time friend of Haughey’s. The trust was set up by Haughey’s bagman, Des Traynor, architect of the infamous Ansbacher deposits in the Cayman Islands.)

According to Kenny, D’Olier House ‘possibly needed a doorman for the door and a good alarm system, but we started off with two men during the night and two during the day . . . And it was a small place. It was farcical.’ One of those he employed at Ahern’s request was Ray Brady, father of Royston and Cyprian. Royston Brady, when asked about it, confirmed that his father, who had previously worked as a taxi-driver, was employed providing security at the D’Olier Street offices in the 1980s before getting a job in Dublin Castle. Kenny, who said he last met the Brady children when they were young teenagers, described Ray Brady as a gentleman.

He was extremely honest, a religious man. He said one strange thing one night when we were discussing his salary. Ray was working for me in
FÁS
in D’Olier Street at the time. Every so often there would be a blow-up about wages. Ray was giving out about Bertie. Obviously Bertie had promised him something else, because, really, security jobs weren’t that good, though it was a job. Ray said, ‘You know, Gerry, how much I love that man, but he is the meanest man in Ireland.’

By this time Kenny had become interested in psychology and was studying in Trinity College, Dublin. He was not paying as much attention as he should have been to his business, and County Security Ltd got into financial trouble. He reduced his payment to Ahern’s constituency operation to one thousand pounds. Then he decided the company would have to fold. When he told Ahern, he said, a number of people became involved in managing the situation.

I think it was a bit alarming for him because he had a number of people working for him through me, and he arranged basically how the company would be liquidated. He sent me to a guy over on Percy Place, then to a second guy. I had a one-to-one meeting with a man where we discussed whether we could keep the business going or shunt it to someone. A meeting was arranged in an impressive office in Merrion Square, a recruitment agency, I think. There were about four people there. Des Richardson officiated.

During Ahern’s time as Minister for Labour his image was that of the scruffy, workaholic politician no-one could dislike. Miriam Lord recalls going for Christmas drinks to the Department of Labour with a colleague from the
Irish Independent
, where she then worked. They talked to Ahern.

He was standing with his back to the wall and drinking a beer. My colleague was an experienced journalist who knew him over the years and, as she was speaking to him, she was brushing dandruff and lint off his jacket, like a mother would do with a child. And then she straightened his tie, ever so slightly, and he continued to speak, like a little boy. If she had taken out a handkerchief and spat on it, and rubbed it on his face, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It was only afterwards that she realised what she had been doing, and she was embarrassed and she said, ‘I’ve just been rubbing the shoulders of the Minister for Labour.’ And then she thought: ‘Ah why wouldn’t I? It’s Bertie. Somebody has to look after him.’ People just felt very at ease with him.

In May 1989 Haughey, who had been running a minority Government with the support of independents, decided to call a general election. The election featured regularly in the Mahon Tribunal and the Moriarty Tribunal (inquiring into payments to Michael Lowry and Charles Haughey) during the 1990s because of the large amount of money given to Fianna Fáil politicians in the course of the campaign. Some of this ended up in personal bank accounts. One of Fianna Fáil’s fund-raisers, Paul Kavanagh, gave evidence to the Moriarty Tribunal that some who gave money to Haughey were indifferent as to whether he put it in his own pocket or gave it to the party.

The 1989 general election saw Ahern poll the second-highest number of first-preference votes in the country, coming in far ahead of his fellow-candidates in the constituency, Dr Dermot Fitzpatrick and John Stafford. The electorate rejected Haughey’s gamble for an absolute majority, and he managed to get back into power only by doing a deal with the
PD
s. Ahern and Albert Reynolds negotiated the deal on behalf of Fianna Fáil. When Haughey announced his new Government, Ahern was still Minister for Labour.

In 1991, when tensions were particularly high between the coalition partners because of suspicions about Haughey, Ahern and Reynolds successfully conducted a review of the Programme for Government with their coalition partners. Shortly afterwards Ahern was in a room in Government Buildings, briefing the journalists Sam Smyth, Stephen Collins and Gerald Barry, when Haughey poked his head round the door. He pointed a finger at Ahern. ‘He’s the man,’ he said. ‘He’s the best, the most skilful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all.’ The comment was duly recorded and has dogged Ahern ever since, though perhaps it did him as much good as it did harm.

As was the case throughout Haughey’s time as leader, there were tensions within Fianna Fáil. Reynolds and a group that became known as the country-and-western set were intent on ousting Haughey. A motion of no confidence was put down for a parliamentary party meeting. It was defeated, and afterwards Haughey sacked Reynolds. Ahern replaced Reynolds in the Department of Finance and so became the second most powerful figure in the Government and a contender for the future leadership of the party.

However, when Haughey resigned a year later, Ahern opted not to fight Reynolds for the leadership. Reynolds became Taoiseach and jettisoned a huge proportion of the Cabinet. Ahern was one of the few left standing.

During Ahern’s time as Minister for Finance he had to deal with a very serious crisis involving Ireland and the European Union’s plan for a single currency. International speculation forced sterling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism and caused a collapse in the value of the currency—a huge blow to the Irish economy, which depended so heavily on exports to Britain. Ahern came under enormous pressure to devalue the Irish currency within the
ERM
. Speculators bet huge amounts against the Irish currency. As well as working with a number of senior civil servants, Ahern worked at this time with Padraic O’Connor, the
NCB
executive who would later become embroiled in one of the dig-out scenarios presented to the Mahon Tribunal to explain lodgements to Ahern’s bank accounts. The currency crisis straddled the collapse of the Reynolds coalition with the
PD
s, a general election and the negotiation of a new coalition arrangement, this time with the Labour Party. Ahern held out against the currency speculators for a period, stating that Ireland would not devalue and was determined to remain within the
ERM
. In the end, in January 1993, he announced a 10 per cent devaluation, and the crisis came to an end. Ahern received wide praise for his handling of the issue, and though the devaluation cost the state money it immediately led to a fall in interest rates and gave the economy a competitive boost that had important long-term consequences.