Bertie Ahern: The Man Who Blew the Boom: Power & Money (5 page)

Oops, that’s embarrassing. Bertie, the doughty old performer, doesn’t say anything, but just keeps grinning and gurning. He’s not agreeing. This is McDowell’s mistake.

A couple of hours later, in the Dáil, Pat Rabbitte flaunts the headlines of the past five or six days about the Coalition on the brink, the Tánaiste in hiding, and Independent
TD
s beginning to write out their shopping lists.

The Tánaiste says none of it ever happened, chides Rabbitte. It was all an invention by a small minority of commentators.

The House chortles as he wonders aloud if anyone had ever heard such patronising, vainglorious nonsense as McDowell’s claim in his script that it would be ‘an act of supreme moral and political folly to reward the wrongful actions of a leaker’ by pulling out of Government.

The Tánaiste stated in black and white that he wanted to know the identity of the donors, the mysterious money men at Manchester. He stated he wanted to know the nature of the function. The Taoiseach told us it was an organised function, that he made a speech, and that they were his friends. He then told us it wasn’t an organised function, he didn’t make a speech and he doesn’t know who was present, apart from two people.

And still McDowell had been given no names. And no answers.

13 October

Friday the thirteenth will haunt Pat and Enda for a long time to come. There’s a Bertie hat-trick in the opinion polls.

Poll
: Bertie’s personal approval rating is actually up.
Poll
: Satisfaction with the Government is up.
Poll
: Fianna Fáil has its highest level of support in two years—up no fewer than eight percentage points!

The survey, carried out for the
Irish Times
by
TNS
/
MRBI
, shows that while two-thirds of the electorate think the Taoiseach was wrong to take unsolicited funds, they simply refuse to regard him as ‘Dirty Bertie’ and want him to stay in power.

It’s as if the people realised he was in a spot of personal difficulty and organised a bit of a whip-round.

As soon as the poll comes out, Fianna Fáilers are joyously texting each other with messages like: ‘Carlsberg don’t do opinion polls, but . . .’

Taken at the conclusion of the payments affair, the poll offers a plague on the houses of Pat and Enda—with Labour down four points and Fine Gael down two.

Bertie is back on course for a General Election three-in-a-row. And they called Haughey a Houdini?

The Taoiseach has just gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and here he is, having bobbed to the bank, poking his head out while the crowd cheers.

18 October

A Swedish Cabinet Minister has resigned because she didn’t pay her
TV
licence, which rather puts Irish politics into perspective. Actually she didn’t pay her licence for 16 years and ended up being in charge of broadcasting . . .

19 October

The Dáil has been demonstrating its relevancy by debating a proposal to make it an offence to detonate a nuclear device in Ireland. Prosecutable in the courts, if there are any afterwards.

Minister Dick Roche admits it is slightly ‘odd’ that the transposition to Irish law of the United Nations Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would allow for a Dr Strangelove who makes a large hole in the national territory to be tried summarily in the District Court, should the
DPP
so decide.

22 October

The Fianna Fáil faithful troop out to Bodenstown for the annual Theobald Wolfe Tone commemoration. Last year they commemorated an entirely different person named ‘Theobold’ on the invitations, but this year they just call him Wolfe Tone.

A local apparatchik, addressing the throng, says that the Holy Trinity of Irish national heroes (Brian Boru, Red Hugh O’Donnell and Éamon de Valera, apparently) has now been joined by a fourth: Bartholomew Patrick Ahern.

29 October

Fianna Fáil support has zoomed for the third time in two weeks in the latest opinion poll, carried out by Red C for the
Sunday Business Post
. Party popularity is up six points. The Blueshirts are down two, while the Red Rose has wilted four.

It’s been a Hallowe’en horror for the Opposition. Everything has blown up in their faces—or worse, as happened with a man in Sunderland who tried to launch a Black Cat Thunderbolt firework from an unusual angle and ended up with a ‘scorched colon’.

  PART TWO

Evidence

Chapter
3  

ST LUKE’S

B
ertie Ahern’s passionate care for his power base in Drumcondra and for the Dublin Central constituency was always a key element of his political character. He regularly came first in the country in the percentage of first-preference votes won in a poll and, apart from his initial general election campaign in 1977, was invariably elected on the first count in Dublin Central.

He had a dedicated team of workers supporting him and a canvassing operation that was probably unrivalled in the state. Even during his period as party leader (when it was party policy to manage the vote in the various constituencies so as to get as many Fianna Fáil
TD
s as possible returned, by spreading the party vote among its candidates), Ahern breached the rule and sought as many first-preference votes for himself as he could. In the 2007 general election campaign a leaflet was delivered to houses in the part of the constituency where the present writer lives seeking first-preference votes for Ahern, second-preference votes for Cyprian Brady and third-preference votes for Mary Fitzpatrick, daughter of the former constituency
TD
Dr Dermot Fitzpatrick. It said that this was what the party wanted supporters to do ‘in your area’, but the same leaflet was delivered throughout the constituency. In this way Ahern gathered the vast bulk of the votes. Brady, who received only 939 first-preference votes, swept past Fitzpatrick after Ahern’s huge surplus was distributed and won the second seat. Brady was a member of Ahern’s inner circle, a group that considered itself to be part and parcel of Ahern’s electorally successful political career.

The former Taoiseach Charles Haughey once famously dubbed these people the Drumcondra Mafia, and the name stuck. They were fiercely loyal and driven supporters of Ahern who acted not out of party loyalty or because of any particular political beliefs but because of their friendship and association with Ahern, and because of a team spirit that, for many of them, went back to their younger days. Ahern would in time appoint some of them to state boards, and in these and other ways many benefited financially as a result of their involvement with him. Patronage has always been an essential part of Ahern’s recipe for political success.

If the streets of Drumcondra and the constituency of Dublin Central were the stuff of Ahern’s beginnings and the springboard for his political career, his constituency centre, St Luke’s, was at the heart of his Tammany Hall, ward-boss operation. It is a detached red-brick building in Lower Drumcondra Road, close to the Tolka, along a stretch of a busy thoroughfare where most of the buildings are commercial. A former doctor’s surgery, it was purchased for £56,000 in 1988 and renovated for use as a constituency centre with upstairs living accommodation. Apart from Sinn Féin representatives, most
TD
s tend to operate from rented or temporarily donated constituency offices. Ahern’s permanent purchased base was unusual in Irish politics and was indicative of his commitment and drive, of the strength of his local organisation and of the ability of Ahern and his supporters to raise money. The Mahon Tribunal’s inquiries into Ahern’s personal finances led to a partial examination of where the money to buy St Luke’s came from and who exactly owned the building. It should have been a straightforward, provable matter, though it proved to be anything but.

The property was bought from a Catherine Daly. A contract for the sale was signed on 19 November 1987 by Daly, as vendor, and by Des Richardson, Joseph Burke and Tim Collins, as purchasers. Richardson’s name on the contract for sale was typed, as was Daly’s, while those of Burke and Collins were handwritten. When asked about this in May 2008 at the tribunal, Richardson rejected any suggestion that he had initially signed the document as sole purchaser.

The deed of assignment—the document that records the actual transfer of the property—is filed in the Registry of Deeds. It is dated 18 May 1988 and signed by Daly as vendor and by five persons as purchasers: Richardson, Burke, Collins, James Keane and Patrick Reilly (‘Paddy the Butcher’). The solicitor acting for the purchasers was Gerard Brennan, a supporter of Ahern. On its own, the document shows that the property belonged to these five men. The Registry of Deeds has no record of any mortgage taken out on the property at the time of the purchase, and no-one has suggested that there was one. The property was bought outright. In its intense examination of Ahern’s finances, and of his and his constituency’s various bank accounts, the Mahon Tribunal never managed to find an account from which the funds that were used to purchase the house originated. Nor were any of the witnesses who gave evidence able to point to an account where the money had resided before being passed to Daly.

All five of the trustees were close supporters of Ahern and minor business figures. Burke was a builder and renovator of pubs. Collins had a tiling business. Richardson, an engineer by training, was involved in recruitment services. Reilly had his own butcher’s business in Stoneybatter and supplied meat to hospitals. Keane was involved in a
DIY
centre called Big J.

Before the purchase of St Luke’s, Fianna Fáil in the North Dublin and Dublin Central constituencies used a building in Amiens Street, the ownership of which went back decades. During the mid-1980s it was decided that the building should be sold, and when it was, in 1989, the proceeds were distributed among a number of Fianna Fáil organisations. In 2008 a spokesperson for the party told the
Sunday Tribune
: ‘The beneficiaries were three of the local constituency comhairles in Dublin. The proceeds of the sale were divided as agreed. The proceeds that accrued to Dublin Central are held in a constituency account.’ In October 2006 Ahern mentioned the Amiens Street sale while being questioned in the Dáil about his personal finances. ‘The house was sold by the trustees and officers of the party, and I probably was a trustee. The money is in the accounts.’

From the evidence heard by the tribunal it appears that the money received by Ahern and his operation in 1989 was still on deposit in 2008 in an investment account. It was not used to purchase St Luke’s or to pay off any debts that had arisen from its purchase.

Since he was first elected to the Dáil in 1977 Ahern operated from a number of places. As well as his office in Leinster House and the use of Amiens Street, he had also kept an office in his mother’s house near All Hallows College in Drumcondra. Later he rented offices above Fagan’s pub in Drumcondra Road, almost opposite St Luke’s.

St Luke’s was very much seen as Ahern’s constituency centre, not the party’s, and it was a physical representation of his power in the constituency. The building was also a representation of his superior strength as a politician. In the period between the breaking up of his marriage in 1987 and his moving to a house in Beresford Avenue in 1995, Ahern made use of the apartment in the upstairs portion of St Luke’s as his living quarters. His former supporter Royston Brady recalls that the upstairs bathroom was the first room he ever encountered with under-floor heating and that Ahern insisted that they take off their shoes to feel its warmth. No-one else used the apartment.

After Haughey’s resignation as Taoiseach and party leader in 1992 there was speculation that Ahern might contest the leadership of the party, which would otherwise go to Albert Reynolds. As was so often the case when confronted with a sudden difficult decision, Ahern appeared to dither. If he went forward and won he would become leader; but if he lost, Reynolds might consider him a threat and seek to isolate him. If he held back and bided his time he could slip into the role of heir-apparent; but what if Reynolds held on to the job for a long period? His time might come and pass.