Bertie Ahern: The Man Who Blew the Boom: Power & Money (27 page)

The budget included measures for the calculation of income tax (individualisation) that were designed to encourage more women into the work force. The initiative caused a furore, and what was designed as a giveaway budget turned into a political controversy. In a subsequent column in the
Irish Times
, Garret FitzGerald returned to criticising McCreevy. Economics was not an end in itself, he pointed out. ‘Increased output is not an end in itself. It is, or at any rate ought to be, simply a means towards a better society.’ As long as there had been a significant level of unemployment, seeking to maximise economic growth was reasonable; but, since full employment was now being reached, and as Ireland’s income levels were now equal to those of its
EU
partners, maximising growth should no longer be a priority. ‘Indeed, in our circumstances, growth maximisation can be a perverse policy, increasing unnecessarily the strains in our economy and pressure on our overburdened infrastructure.’ McCreevy’s policies were going in the opposite direction to what society required, he argued.

On New Year’s Day 2002 Ahern went to his local newsagents in Drumcondra and bought sultana cake, milk and pears. He paid in Irish pounds and was given his change in euro. He came to the shop for newspapers and fruit regularly, according to the shopkeeper, Marion O’Neill, but this was different: it was a scheduled press event, and photographers and reporters were there to record the Taoiseach’s first use of the new currency. Someone had even brought a bottle of champagne. It was election year, the reporters pointed out. Would Ahern still be Taoiseach after the poll? ‘We’ll keep trying,’ he replied.

The circumstances facing the Government as it entered election year were not as they had been envisaged a year earlier. The dot-com boom, which had boosted the United States and the global economy, had come to an end, and the world economy was also suffering from the insecurities created by the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. The concerns that Brussels had about Irish and European inflation were no longer an issue, and, for the first time since its coming into power, the Ahern Government was having to deal with difficult economic circumstances. The change in the atmosphere, however, did not lead to any slowing in the rate of current and capital expenditure.

Ahern also found himself facing a new leader of the opposition. Poor poll results had prompted discontent in Fine Gael with the leadership of John Bruton, and, though he successfully resisted a number of efforts to shift him, he was eventually replaced in early 2001 by the Limerick
TD
and former schoolteacher Michael Noonan. According to Mark Brennock, nine months before Bruton was ousted, an unnamed Fianna Fáil minister had said to him, ‘Fine Gael are going to dump Bruton and hand us the election.’

The shafting of Bruton certainly did little to improve the party’s ratings or that of its leader, though Fianna Fáil was also having difficulties. An
Irish Times
/
MRBI
opinion poll of 25 January showed that satisfaction with the Government was down ten points since the previous poll, and support for Fianna Fáil had dropped one point. Ahern’s personal satisfaction rating had climbed to 68 per cent, its highest level in eighteen months. A return to power of the Fianna Fáil-
PD
coalition was the preferred choice among those offered to respondents in the survey.

The final Fianna Fáil ard-fheis before the election took place in the second weekend in March, in the wake of an abortion referendum in which the electorate had voted against a Government proposal for constitutional change. In the opening remarks of his address Ahern hit the note that he and his party were privately hoping would not only return them to power but would provide them with an absolute majority. ‘During the longest and most stable Government that this nation has seen in peacetime, during the longest and most spectacular economic growth that this nation has ever seen in our history, we have met the challenge with courage and with confidence,’ he said. The speech was stuffed with figures. It also addressed the issue of political sleaze.

The uncovering of a previously hidden and unacceptable past in our political life undermined confidence in politics and politicians. This Government’s response has been to initiate the most far-reaching inquiries not only in the history of this state but also in the recent history of most democratic societies. Through the tribunals the facts are being established and the truth is being found out.

Having praised his Government’s achievements, Ahern turned to pouring derision on the Fine Gael-Labour Party alternative.

Their vision is back to the bad old days. The bad old days called the 1980s. Their formula is to raise taxes! Raise taxes, reduce revenue, deter investment and destroy jobs.

The Rainbow’s ideas would bring a dark cloud over the economy. ‘They would take Ireland back to where they left it.’ The record of the opposition parties was one of failure, he said.

Many observers of Bertie Ahern did not believe that he had strong political convictions, but there was general agreement that the desire he had to build a new sports stadium in Dublin, to be called Sports Campus Ireland, was a deeply held one. For Rabbitte, Ahern had a sincere interest in sport.

The only time I ever saw Bertie being genuinely passionate about achieving something was the Bertie Bowl. I think he was furious with me for creating that term. He really identified with that project. Maybe he saw it in terms of it being his legacy.

The plan for the Bertie Bowl remained a matter for political and public debate, even though large amounts of public money were being put towards the redevelopment of Croke Park. By the time of the 2002 general election, work on Croke Park, which would see it accommodating close to eighty thousand spectators, was nearing completion. There was a second available stadium at Lansdowne Road. Ahern’s stadium was initially costed at more than €400 million. The figure got larger as the project continued being debated, with the eventual estimated cost being raised to €1 billion.

Eventually Ahern’s coalition partners came out against the project. As the election campaign got under way Harney spoke out about it and its cost. McDowell, Ahern’s Attorney-General, had been tempted back into politics and was seeking to regain his seat in Dublin South-East. With characteristic rhetorical panache he referred to the stadium idea as a ‘Ceau
escu-era Olympic project’ that should be opposed as a matter of public morality. ‘Campus Ireland is a potent symbol of all that has gone wrong in the past, and that will go wrong in the future, if the Irish people ever revert to the politics of one party, one leader, one voice.’ He said the
PD
s were seeking a mandate to oppose the project. It was strong stuff from someone who was still the Government’s Attorney-General. In response Ahern said, ‘I am sure it is a tight situation in Dublin South-East.’ The stadium was never built, and what appears to have been Ahern’s pet project and his desired structural legacy never materialised.

Ahern called the election on 24 April, in odd circumstances. The 28th Dáil was the longest since the Second World War, and on the evening of the 24th a minister of state, Mary Hanafin, was in the chamber answering Pat Rabbitte’s adjournment motion concerning cutbacks in funds for the intellectually disabled. Just before 9 p.m., and much to the surprise of the few who were there, Ahern came into the chamber and sent a note to the Ceann Comhairle, Séamus Pattison, saying that he wanted to speak. There was no-one in the public gallery, and two journalists who were out in the press rooms quickly ran to take their seats in the gallery when they saw him appear. Ahern had come down from his office in Government Buildings without telling anyone what he was doing. Hanafin stopped so that Ahern could speak. ‘I wish to inform the house as a matter of courtesy that I intend to proceed to Áras an Uachtaráin at 9 a.m. tomorrow to advise the President, pursuant to article 13 of the Constitution, to dissolve Dáil Éireann.’ Polling day would be 17 May. ‘Let the battle begin,’ said Rabbitte.

Fianna Fáil started planning for the 2002 general election campaign four years before it happened. The key figures in devising the campaign were Haughey’s former press officer, P. J. Mara, and the general secretary, Martin Macken. They held their first meeting about the campaign in the autumn of 1998. They looked at the party’s possible candidates and at constituency vote management. They commissioned research on a range of topics. Focus groups, in which a selection of people are asked for their views on current affairs, were organised, as were constituency opinion polls. All this, of course, cost a lot of money.

The day after Ahern unexpectedly called the election, the Fianna Fáil campaign was launched in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, with Mara telling the assembled media, ‘Okay, folks, it’s show time!’ The campaign was designed to come out of the traps with force. Each day had a master plan with a distinct message and a grid system to govern what was to be achieved. Ahern’s contribution was to be on the road, doing what he did so well: canvassing. Des Richardson and Chris Wall were among the group that would meet Mara every morning at seven in the party head office to discuss the outcome of the previous day and the plans for the coming day. The centre of operations was on the first floor of Treasury Buildings, an office building on the site of the former Bolands Mill. The building is owned by the property developer Johnny Ronan, of Treasury Holdings, and the businessman Paddy McKillen.

The Treasury Holdings operation was in part modelled on the system run by the British Labour Party in its head office in London during the British general election. The assistance Fianna Fáil got from the British Labour Party rankled with Pat Rabbitte.

I remember being in Millbank [the British Labour Party offices] expressing my displeasure to the general secretary that there were more Fianna Fáil people being housed there for the course of the British general election than there were Labour people, and the general secretary agreed with me. He told me privately afterwards that Blair personally phoned him and told him he was to facilitate Bertie. Bertie worked it very thoroughly with Blair.

The Treasury Holdings operation was so wound up that the passion with which it burst into action in the first week of the election campaign backfired, in that journalists began to resent its unrelenting and pushy efforts to manipulate the agenda.

Meanwhile Ahern was out canvassing, getting his picture taken and providing sound-bites. A piece by the political writer Deaglán de Bréadún in the
Irish Times
opened: ‘They seek him here, they seek him there. Bertie is Fianna Fáil’s Scarlet Pimpernel. Pity the poor media trying to keep track of him.’ He quoted Mary Wilson of
RTE
, who was, with difficulty, following the Ahern canvass as it blitzed through Ireland.

They like to go to shopping centres, press the flesh, in one door, out the other, hardly pausing for breath. Bertie Ahern shakes every hand. If he has missed a hand, a handler will have the hand waiting for him as he walks along. Nothing goes unnoticed by Ahern and his handlers as he walks around.

De Bréadún wrote that a handler had once explained the policy to him during a Donegal by-election. A man goes to a shopping centre to buy mince. He happens upon a crowd and, before he knows it, he has shaken the hand of the Taoiseach. When he goes home he tells his wife. When polling day comes around, he feels that same hand pulling his towards supporting the Fianna Fáil candidate.

On our screens we see Bertie, barrelling along in his inimitable sailor’s walk, seemingly determined to shake every hand of every non-journalist from Malin Head to Mizen Head and Artane to Ahascragh . . . Like some third world potentate, Bertie is reaching over the heads of the media to communicate directly with the voters. The ubiquitous Ahern posters contribute to the atmosphere of a benign and paternalistic African dictatorship.

On the businessman Denis O’Brien’s ‘Newstalk 106’, Rabbitte complained of Ahern’s image being ‘more in evidence this month than Kylie Minogue’s backside,’ while on
TV
3 the broadcaster Damien Kiberd referred to Fianna Fáil as engaging in ‘Joe Stalin-like hagiography’. Others, de Bréadún reported, were muttering comparisons with Ceau
escu. As we have already seen, Ahern had devoted a large part of his schedule over the previous five years touring the country, and the election campaign meant a full-time, as against a part-time, adoption of this practice.