INSIDE POLITICS - BERTIE AHERN'S SECOND DAY AT MAHON

Those who work in the survival business – writers; sportspeople, actors and politicians - know that ultimately they are only as good as their last book, game, film or election.

Bertie Ahern is around enough to understand more than most what a precarious, dangerous and unpredictable business politics is. He will be well aware of Enoch Powell’s dictum that all political careers end in failures, will have seen too many of his colleagues – Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke, Liam Lawlor, Padraig Flynn, and Denis Foley – see their careers and reputations upended unceremoniously for them.

What is clear is that Bertie Ahern has himself taken a bit of a hiding this week.
What is more difficult to assess is the extent of the damage to his reputation and to his standing as Taoiseach. What is sure more he walks into booby traps at the Mahon Tribunal, the shorter his period as leader will be. But it is infuriatingly difficult to make any firm conclusions. We have seen him encounter crises like this before where he looked like a sure goner only for his popularity to go shooting up in opinion polls, or for FF to win elections.

What you can say with certainty is that he will be browned off that it did not finish last night as scheduled. Fianna Fail’s annual parliamentary party think-in begins in Monday. He would have wanted the Tribunal to have been behind him by then but instead for about the fifth time in a year, his personal finances will dominate the agenda at his party.

Amongst the scribes, the consensus on yesterday went as follow: He was damaged, that he an awful day, that some of the evidence was ruinous to him, that it was death by a thousand cuts etc. But I just couldn’t bring myself to agree with it? Sure it’s serious stuff. But given his Teflon knack in the past, it will have to be very serious to down him and until then, all FF ministers will stay loyal to him.

Having said that the stakes are very high indeed. Ahern’s explanation and clarifications of all the lodgements, the dig-out loans, the whip-arounds and the house purchase have been ropey. And that innate ropiness of his accounts has been exposed on a good few occasions by the persistent if sometimes monotonous questioning of Tribunal lawyer Des O’Neill.

As well, Ahern’s narrative has always been that he has fully complied and cooperated with the Tribunal. Yesterday, we had further reminders that the Tribunal’s own experience is at variance with this. As well as the lateness in disclosing foreign exchange reactions, it emerged yesterday failed in his obligation to include the fact of Celia Larkin’s involvement in an account operating to his benefit in an affidavit of discovery (that’s pretty serious)

Yesterday, after a day and a half of thoroughly exhaustive and exhausting preliminaries, the Tribunal finally turned its attention to the four specific lodgements, and the substantive issues surrounding Mr Ahern.

And the first that has come under scrutiny has been a lodgement of £24,838 in punts in October 1994. Ahern’s version of events is that this is primarily made up of two separate components – the second dig-out loan he got from friends totalling £16,500 in addition to the £8,000 sterling that he was handed after a whip-around by Manchester-based zillionaires sometime in 1994.

All very well until Tribunal lawyers began to do the maths and then discovered that the figures just didn’t tally. The exchange rates of the day just didn’t support the two sources that Ahern claimed for the money. In other words the sterling sum would have to be in pounds and pence.

When it did its own assessment, it found that the sum lodged of 24,838 exactly matched the money you would get if you exchanged £25,000 sterling. That was explosive stuff. If that was the case, it meant that the version of event that Bertie Ahern has put on the public record just wasn’t true, that there was no £8,000 sterling, no £16,500 and that his narrative was a fabrication and – well – a brazen bare-faced lie. And if that were true, or established, or proven, there would be no question but the Taoiseach would fall on his sword. He just couldn’t survive that, politically.

But there was one problem with this theory (and that’s what it is because there are no documents to back up this version of events; or indeed Ahern’s). It assumed that the bank teller had applied a rate that day that was for sums of £2,500 and below, rather than a more favourable rate for larger sums.

“You are saying a person going in with £25,000 gets a rate for £2,500 and is entirely screwed by the bank,” riposted Ahern to O’Neill.

The lawyer pointed out that the same rate for £2,500 was mistakenly applied for a sum of £20,000 Ahern deposited in December 1995, before it was corrected to the appropriate rate.

Hugely coincidental and all as it is, the theory still makes a huge assumption that the teller applied the wrong rate, either deliberately or mistakenly. And the December example isn’t compelling because the mistake was rectified by the bank at the time.

What was lacking yesterday were other comparitors. Surely, an exercise could have been conducted to see if the £2,500 rate was mistakenly applied to sums exchanged by other customers with large amounts around that time.

Overall, the Taoiseach has done himself no favours throughout the process. Everytime he explains, the sands shift a little bit more. A new detail is included. The story is tweaked to address a potential weakness in his version of events. There are new recollections.

There are parts of Bertie Ahern’s account that were not convincing when he first told it and are still not convincing a year later, notwithstanding all the tweaks, elaborations and clarifications.

And besides that, it was morally and ethically iffy for a Minister for Finance to take non-repayable repayable loans from friends and whip-arounds from Manchester businessmen. The sums of money involved were huge, especially if you are one of the little guys on the terraces. But having said all that, there are few who are as expert in the survival business as he is.

Damian Enlgish, the fast-talking TD for Meath East, told RTE
www.rte.ie/news/morningireland.html
this morning that he's skiing in Andorra. Any snow? asked Cathal Mac Coille. No, said Damian. Just the artificial stuff.
Unexepectedly, and unpleasantly, Damian found wading around knee-deep in some other nasty stuff today. But this was entirely of his own making and Damo, who should have known better, walked right into it.

Sure English is the youngest TD in the Dail. But anyone who knows him will also know that there are no flies on him, that he will be more than able to see off any rivals in his own Meath patch. He would have dispatched Mairead McGuinness, had she interloped in his territory. He will dispatch Graham Geraghty too, and far more subtly that that Aussie Rules bully. But he will dispatch him all the same.

Now Damian can give out about being misquoted in the Indo this morning. But the fact is that he restated exactly what John Deasy said earlier this week: Enda Kenny's leadership would be challenged if Fine Gael did not get into government.
This all stemmed from an interview that Kenny did with the Examiner.
I asked him about his leadership should FG narrowly lose. He gave an answer that was really a demurral. Deasy was asked about the interview on local radio in Waterford and basicaly cited party policy.

But of course there are undertones. Citing party policy is all very well but it also infers conditionality of support. What both Deasy and English raised was the prospect of a FG loss. Does a public airing of the leadership issue before a General Election, undermine confidence and lead to an erosion of public support? Possibly, probably, say FG strategists.

What Deasy and English have said, the will argue, is naive at best, bordering on disloayal at worst.

It didn't help the party one little bit that the person who went on Morning Ireland to defend the party was Shane McEntee, its TD for Meath East. Cathal Mac Coille rightly cut him short the second time he came out with the ludicrous cliche that he was a Meath men and Meath men always think about winning.

Wednesday December 13 20.19

The eve of the Dail going into hibernation for Chrismas. The Dail is still sitting. The debate is like one of the minor races at evening's end, a bumper or novice race. Or the undercard at a boxing night. They are debating a Labour party motion on Dublin transport - more buses, less traffic jams, gridlock etc. Not that the main attractions today set the pulse running.

Crime (particulary the terrible double hit job in Dublin yesterday) has dominated this week's agenda in the Dail.

For those not attuned to the niceties and protocol of this august institution, Leaders Questions s is the twice-weekly slot where party leaders have a chance to ask the Taoiseach a question on any subject, without giving him notice. They happen on Tuesdays afternoon and Wednesday mornings. They tend to produce (but not always) the most newsworthy exchanges and (occasionally) some fire-in-the-belly rows. These are the debates that are most likely to be covered on radio and TV and by the newspapers the following morning. And this week, every question has been about gang wars.

(It's now 8.31 and the division bells are ringing, summoning TDs to the chamber to vote on the Labour Party motion. The Government whips ensure there are always sufficient TDs around to ensure a comfortable majority. No vote has been lost since 2002. In Britain though, Government chief whip Hillary Armstrong got the boot earlier this year, as an indirect result of getting the maths wrong and losing a vital Commons vote (on Iraq as far as I recall).

The point I'm slowly getting around to is topic count. While I have not had a chance to tot up the total, I'd guess that crime and health have dominated the discourse during Leaders question almost wholly.

Crime is the handiest weapon of choice in political showdowns. Comparing crime levels in Ireland with that of other countries is very difficult. But as far as I can ascertain, Ireland remains a compartively safe country, albeit with the levels of drug, gang crime, and homicides that one might expect in a developed and largely urbanised society.

But the problem is that is always presented as a crisis, both by politicians and by the media. The best part of Michael Moore's 'Bowling for Columbine' was his section on communal fear, and the cultivation of fear by the American media. And what that gives rise to in an Irish context is politicians outvying each other in the 'tough on crime' stakes. How many clampdowns, crackdowns, draconian measures etc. can be tolerated before it becomes ridiculous? An infinity unfortunately.

Even Bertie Ahern gets in on the act. Miriam Lord has acutely described Ahern in his Bertie the Bystander mode - the man in the anorak who shakes his head in annoyance at the terrible state of chassis.

Being a man of the people, he obviously shares their sense of powerlessness when terrible things happen.

20.58. It's a late sitting tonight. They have moved on to the adjournment debate. Time for this particular debate to be adjourned.

PS. Ciaran Cuffe's blog has a brilliant pic of a Garda traffic corp 4x4 parked on a bicycle lane, while one of the guards pops into a delicatessen. In the debate tonight, the rights of cyclists hardly features. Dublin's cycle lanes doubljob as parking spaces for cars and vans (yes, the hazard lights excuse everything).

Besides the Greens, the only TD I know who regularly uses a bicycle is Dr Dermot Fitzpatrick, the unassuming Fianna Fail representative for Dublin Central.

One of the reasons that cycling is so low on the priority list is that Ministers don't use them. The only time that Martin Cullen has used one recently was for a publicity shot. At least Bertie had the good grace to decline a photo op recently, leaving the honour of wobbling for Ireland to the irrepressible Environment Minister Dick Roche.

I have been cycling in Dublin for 14 years, even though it is beginning to scare the bejasus out of me as I get older. I got 'doored' on the South Quays earlier this year and ended up splayed in the middle of what is a highway with a truck bearing down on me. The lack of roadspace (and respect) for cyclists in Dublin is an abomination.

BERTIE AHERN’S moment of true political genius during this term of Government was realising he had to give Charlie McCreevy the flick.


Ivan Yates found the phrase for it when he reminded us on RTE's The Week in Politics last Sunday week that eaten bread is soon forgotten. And that was McCreevy’s problem. What he had been so right for in 1997, he was so wrong for seven years later.

Was he killed off by the Frankenstein he himself created to ethically cleanse civil servants from the capital? Was he killed off by the lousy by-election, local election and European election results in 2004?



Or was he killed off by a leader whose control of him was as complete as Mick McCarthy’s over Roy Keane? In all likelihood, it was combination of all of the above. With Bertie nothing is ever as neat as a Colonel Plum-type operation with a candlestick in the sonservatory.

To be sure, here was a leader who innately knew — without being exactly able to say why — that his unpredictable star player was on the wane and had to go. And that he needed an honest grafter to fill the gap.

Timing was everything. And cometh the hour, cometh the Beast. An early departure for McCreevy allowed his favoured successor Brian Cowen sufficient time to make his mark. On Wednesday, Cowen presented his third Budget speech as if it was part of a continuum, as if he had been there forever… Charlie who?

And his budget speech was some feat. The text was that of a leader-in-waiting. The delivery was that of an altar server who’s just received communion, all downcast eyes and humble piety.

Cowen is such a masterful spinner that he often appears completely unspun. He hit all the right buttons on Wednesday in reaching out to all the key constituencies that Fianna Fáil will need to bring them home next year — and getting there firstest with the mostest was never so easy, what with all the sleáms of money he had sloshing around him.

His greatest trick of all was presenting the biggest giveaway election budget of all time as if it wasn’t an election budget at all.

He didn’t go on and on about all the great things the Government has done since 1997. He didn’t strut, he didn’t showboat, he didn’t patronise people about how well we are doing.

The balancing act was a subtle one. Dropping the top tax rate by 1% is a measure that helps the better off. The semantics for that became “rewarding work”.

But just in case anyone got the notion that it’s Government for the rich by the rich, there was the clever little increase in the health levy for those earning over €100,000.

“This extra money will help fund services such as long-term care initiatives for the elderly. We need to act now to secure such funds and I believe it is only right that those best able to afford it make an increased contribution.”

That sounds great until you realise that they’ll actually be making a decreased contribution, having benefited from tax cuts.

The most resonant phrases though was one that encapsulated the Fianna Fáil approach since Inchydoney and ones that you’d never imagine forming on the lips of McCreevy. They related to the social welfare changes.

“One of the measures of a true republic is the strength of its support for those on low incomes…the Government does not see economic growth as an end in itself.”

It would have been fatuous for any of the opposition parties to quibble with the generous increase in pension and social welfare payments. And, in fairness, none did.

But the main asks from Cowen required action on two conflicting fronts. He had to appeal to the all the voters who demanded what’s in it for me? And he had to appeal to all the voters who demanded what’s in it for the poor, the unemployed and the elderly? The paradox was that in most cases it was the same voters who were asking both questions. With one stroke, he had to satisfy their greed and also salve their consciences.

And the problem with that is that it took up the bulk of spending: some €2.6 billion of an estimated €3.7bn. For everything else, it was a case of cutting the cloth to suit the measure.

The much-trumpeted greening of Fianna Fáil turned out to be tentative and half-assed. The €270 million spend on carbon credits was a roundabout admission of failure on our Kyoto commitment.

Maybe we were missing the point. It was a green budget alright. Plenty of greenbacks.

And in Cowen, Bertie Ahern had the perfect minister for bringing Fianna Fáil to its green and republican roots.

12.29am Saturday, December 2



First of all, thanks for the comments (shorter paras and spaces between noted). Maybe it was my naivete but before I posted my first (test) blog I spent a while looking through blogger.com to try to get a sense of who was writing, what they were writing.

It was like looking at the sky on a clear night - an overwhelming infinity of stars. And I thought that tip-toing into a blog would be like shouting into that kind of void.

There are a couple of political sites and politically inclined web sites in Ireland - most of them are good and constantly good. Lots of blogs too. But few by journalists. I suppose the best known is that of the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson.

Because I write for a living, the thought of sitting down at in-between moments to serve up even more words to screen, gives you a slight sense of foreboding. There are a couple of fairly obvious traits that many blogs share. The first is that they tend to be very first-person oriented. Secondly, for a journalist, you tend to mull over our copy (for accuracy and for style) even when you are turning it around. This format is way more informal. I for one feel a reluctance to embrace the notion that my stuff will be published as soon as it is written.

There was an absorbing interview with Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate in the Guardian media section last Monday. It's at http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1957600,00.html
The argument he made was compelling. It is one we have heard before, but, coming from him, it glowed with authority. In essence, he was saying newspapers are on the way out. They will not be able to live with the instant and organic nature of internet journalism. Print articles are immutable and final, whereas on the web they are part of a conversation.

Here is a snatch of Weisberg's fascinaing take on the phenomenon.
He says: "Anyone who really wants to participate in that conversation has to have a presence on the web now - not necessarily a blog, but they have to have a website or write for an online publication. Within half an hour of posting a piece on Slate, I get a direct, often hostile and personal, response from readers.

"That's part of what I think has been so frustrating for the columnists on the New York Times, like Thomas Friedman, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, who are online but are behind a 'pay-wall' - you have to be a subscriber to the paper or subscribe separately to the website before you can get them. That effectively cuts them out of the political conversation."

Surely that is every journalist's nightmare, a pedants' charter? He disagrees. "It's great. I think part of the reason anyone goes into journalism is to get a response to what they write. The fact that it's frequently very negative is the least important part of it. You get habituated to the instantaneity."

Fianna Fail held its annual Cairde Fail dinner dance in the tundra territory of City West tonight (Friday Dec 1). It's one of those things that as a political correspondent you feel you have to go to but you're always amazed at the turnout. It was Hill 16 with tables. I have written before in the Irish Examiner about Fianna Fail being a cult but this dinner is not quite like the Ard Fheis, because many of the tables are taken up by corporates paying their political dues (what was the tag line from the ad for Trócaire - Give a little, it will help a lot).

Bertie gave a speech which I missed. It had actually had funny moments, which for Bertie is almost miraculous. BERTIE SHOCKER - TAOISEACH CRACKS A JOKE THAT'S FUNNY.

Or why this lazy journalist was late. HACK MISSES FIRST COURSE OF SUMPTUOUS FIANNA FAIL FEAST BECAUSE HE'S TIED DOWN WRITING AN ARTICLE ON BERTIE'S SPEECH.

He had a cut at the media, and the 42 journalists on the political gallery (I didn't know there were so many of us there). I believe he came out with the notion that we come in to work, get a couple of knocking quotes, take a couple of pot-shots at the political target du jour and we're all done and dusted after a couple of hours, ready to hold forth at at Doheny and Nesbitts or some other drinking establishment.

We may be accused of a lot of things - beng manipulative, sly, janus-faced, cynical, cruel etc. But unfortunately we have yet to master the skill of automatic and instantaneous reports jst yet. We may not put in so many hours as Bertie (120 per week, or is it 130, according to himself). But we work long long days, which isn't helped by the knack of the political class to releasing the juicier stuff at a convenient time like 7.30pm at night.

Anyway, some guy stood up to announce the raffle. We want a silent collection, he implored to the faithful. This of course is a fundraiser. And how much does the party make from it? God knows! The ethics and standards legislation that came in in the mid 1990s seemed foolproof. But the drafters were fiendshly clever.

They set limits for personal and corporate/company loans that seemed comparatively low, some E600 for a personal one, and E1,270 for a corporate. If your donation exceeded the limit, it had to be declared. Ok, so it stopped the big E100,000 donations from big business. But nstead of getting a couple of big wads of greenbacks, the parties got loads of little ones, all below the limit.

When you look at the official declaratons, you are always struck at how few donations there are. But then you are missing the hundreds of smaller ones that flew under the radar of declaration. In the States, everything has to be declared from the $500,000 corporate donaton to the ten bucks given by a widow. But here, we still have no idea how much parties raise, especially FF whose glut of publicity over the next six months suggests it has been funded by hundreds of similar silent collectons.

5pm - Government releases White Paper on its projections for the performance of the Exchequer for this year. The figures are stunning. A €2 billion surplus. Everything has been above projection, especially stamp duty and capital gains tax. Doesn't it make Brian Cowen look great. There he was at the Budget last year, predicting a deficit of €2.9 million. And hasn't the genius produced figures that are an amazing €5 billion better than that.

Wait a minute. A €5 billion difference. How could they have got their projections so badly wrong? Why didn't they do their sums better? Hasn't someone told them the economy has been doing really well and we're all drinking lattes these days? Why didn't they consult Fergus Gibson, who would have told them that Venus descending over Mars is bling time?

Well, there was a method to their bad maths (I know, it's not a very good pun). If you look back over the four year's of this Government's term, you can always rely on the Department of Finance for making the Minister look good. That's done by predicting a sizeable deficit each year. And then, lo and behold, the Minister announced at the end of the year that he's marshalled the economy so well, and being so faithful to his true love, Prudence, that we're not in deficit after all, but, gosh, we are swimming in it. Last year, they said we'd have a deficit of €2.8 billion and - yes - we cancelled it out and then some. And in 2004, and in 2003, and in 2002 also.

To me, there is a degree of politicisation here that's unhealthy. If you set your targets really modestly and conservatively, you are going to surpass them easily. The political effect of that is that the Miniser looks good; really good; master-of-the-universe good. And we're all fooled by it. Wait for the headlines in Saturday's papers which will read along these lines: Brian's war chest, Brian's budget bonanza, cut in top rate of interest rates on Wednesday.

Thursday
a.m. I took the day off because I was giving a short speech on the Freedom of Information Act in a city centre hotel as part of a seminar. Emily O'Reilly, the Informaton Commissioner, spoke earlier. Had a right go at the Fianna Fail members of the backbench Finance Committee who seemed to back proposals to drop some of the many non-disclosure clauses in legislation (that makes a body or information exempt from the FOI Act) but then did a mealy-mouthed U-turn when the party bosses imposed the whip.
Raced through my own script because they were seriously behind time. I thought I had a couple of half-decent lines. Because I was talking at the speed of a racing commentator galloping along with the horses on the final furlong, I think that comic timing was a bit of an issue and my witty bits bellyflopped.

6pm. Launch of the Green Party's Book 'A Journey to Change'. It marks the 25th anniversary of the party. It was held in the Central Hotel where the first ever meeting took place. I wrote the preface and John Bowman, who launched it, praised my piece. Too much actually. Of course, I was dying to get a name check for him. But when he mentioned my piece for about the sixth time, even I was getting embarrassed. I read the piece again a little later to rediscover my outrageous talent. It's a piece I'm proud of, I must admit, but it's not world beating. And much of it leans heavily for its detail from Dan Boyle's fine account of the party.

The party's six TDs are all dapper enough in their own way, though only Trevor Sargent and Dan Boyle, stick rigidly to the Dail uniform of suit and tie. The launch reminded you of what a roots party the Greens still is. Lots of tweed, and fleeces, and tousled hair. It would be unimaginable to have young kids at a do by another party. But a scatter of very young children played happily on the floor while the speeches were being made. The adults were as oblivious of them as they were of the adults. It made for a nice change. Reminded you of how family unfriendly so much of social life (ie restaurants and pubs) is in Ireland.