This article was first published in the Irish Mail on Sunday newspaper on December 2, 2012.
Investigations Editor
On Wednesday afternoon at 2.30pm, Finance Minister Michael Noonan will rise from his Dáil seat and begin to read a devastating Budget speech that will outline €3.5bn in tax increases and spending cuts.
Forty minutes later, we will all know how much more we have to suffer in 2013. Conspicuous by his absence in the post-budget debate will be the man who, more than anyone else perhaps, led the country to this impasse – Bertie Ahern.
As a minister for finance and a three-term taoiseach, Mr Ahern’s reign over Ireland’s economy spanned the entire Celtic Tiger period and sowed the seeds of the current crisis. At the height of the boom Mr Ahern had nothing but disdain for anyone who questioned the direction Ireland’s wildly speculative, construction-led economy was taking.
In fact, in a misplaced and insensitive 2007 remark he went as far as telling the naysayers to go and kill themselves.
‘Sitting on the sidelines or on the fence cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. In fact, I don’t know how the people who engage in that don’t commit suicide,’ he told a startled union conference. It is perhaps ironic that many now feel Mr Ahern’s own policies and leadership propelled Ireland’s economy into to a suicidal nosedive – not that he would admit that himself.
‘I heard constantly, “spend, spend”… I was criticised all the time that I spent too little,’ he told an interviewer in 2010. ‘If I had cut spending they would have crucified me.’
Active: Bertie Ahern on his home turf in Drumcondra this week (photo credit Sean Dwyer)
Others, though, place the blame squarely on Mr Ahern’s shoulders.
University of Limerick founder Ed Walsh has accused Mr Ahern, along with former taoiseach Brian Cowen, of having the ‘economic insights of intoxicated joyriders’ as they ‘perversely poured fuel on the flames by incentivising speculative building and borrowing’.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has reached a similar conclusion: ‘Bertie squandered the wealth of a generation and I think in time it will be proven he was a useless wastrel,’ he told a radio interviewer.
But where is Bertie Ahern these days? And just what is he doing with himself in retirement? Eight months on from being forced to resign from Fianna Fáil in the wake of a damning Mahon Tribunal report that found he lied repeatedly about his finances, Mr Ahern has all but vanished as a public persona.
And it’s a safe presumption that he is about as likely to raise his head this week as he is to send Judge Mahon a friendly Christmas card. But behind the scenes he remains in active contact with old acquaintances in business circles, particularly in the renewable energy sector, where he chairs a little-known solar energy company, Scientia Solar Ltd, which is part owned by Frank Smith, a massive tax defaulter.
InterAction council: This year Mr Ahern was listed as a member of this prominent body of former world leaders, which aims to ‘develop recommendations for the political, economic and social problems facing humanity’
Mr Ahern’s involvement as chairman of the International Forestry Fund – a joint venture between a Swiss investment firm and an Irish forestry company – has been well aired. He has also travelled frequently to China, helping in the process with the Asian ambitions of NAMA developer and one-time FF supporter Sean Mulryan.
While his reputation back home is in tatters, Mr Ahern appears to be engaged in an international campaign aimed at establishing himself as something of a global statesman. Prior to the release of the Mahon report in March, Mr Ahern had enhanced his international image, most notably by being involved in the later stages of brokering the ETA ceasefire in Spain in 2011. But following the Mahon report he was unceremoniously dropped as a speaker for the Washington Speakers Bureau – a role that earned him €29,000 per speech, resulting in fees of more than €400,000 in 2009 alone.
Since then, his international activities appear to have been concentrated in far-flung locations where the Mahon report is unknown and where Mr Ahern’s noteworthy achievements in the peace process dwarf any knowledge of his role in Ireland’s economic crisis.
One such location is Hong Kong, where an influential group known as the International Economic Club of China (ECC) is based. The appointment has never been reported publicly before, but this week the club’s secretary general, Eric Yuan, told the Irish Mail on Sunday that Mr Ahern had agreed to join the club’s International Advisory Council in June. ‘It is an honorary title and does not involve any salary or expense,’ said Mr Yuan. The privately owned club charges corporate individuals a membership fee of $5,000 a year.
Membership grants access to events at which the attendance of dignitaries from China and elsewhere is guaranteed. Mr Ahern is joined on the club’s International Advisory Council by former Bolivian president Jorge Quiroga, former prime minister of the Republic of Korea Dr Han Seung-soo and former president of Panama Martín Torrijos.
Mr Ahern’s profile on the club’s website is a word-for-word copy of a profile that he posted on his own website – bertieahernoffice.org – after leaving political office.
The glowing chronology of his career includes the following: ‘On the wider world stage during his Presidency of the European Council from January 2004 to June 2004, Bertie Ahern presided over the historic enlargement of the European Union to 27 member states, including eight countries from Eastern Europe.
‘He led Ireland to take leadership roles on key global issues such as increasing aid to developing countries and tackling the spread of HIV Aids.’
There is no mention of the fact that he has been found to have lied under oath to a public inquiry about the source of hundreds of thousands of euros in dubious payments or of the fact that he presided over policies that left Ireland in an economic quagmire.
But the Hong Kong club is not the only place where Mr Ahern’s self-approved profile appears. It is also posted word for word on the website of the InterAction Council – a prominent body of former world leaders that Mr Ahern has recently joined.
The group’s aim is ‘to develop recommendations… for the political, economic and social problems confronting humanity.’
Mr Ahern was listed as a member of the Council for the first time this year. His membership has also not been reported, although he attended the council’s annual meeting in Tianjin, China, in May where he met with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
These types of contacts will do nothing to harm Mr Ahern’s other associations in China, where he travelled repeatedly last year, once with the owner of Ballymore Properties Seán Mulryan and Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson.
The council failed to respond to questions about when precisely Mr Ahern had joined, how the organisation was funded and whether Mr Ahern is in receipt of any salary or expenses.
Mr Ahern’s blemish-free profile is also available on the website of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Germany where he has recently become an advisory board member.
Mr Ahern, a keen Manchester United supporter, struck a familiar note as he kicked off a presentation at the institute, when he told an anecdote about asking someone from Manchester whether they were a United or a City fan, only to be told they supported Newcastle.
The MoS asked the Institute to specify when Mr Ahern had joined and whether he was paid but received no response.
Despite his international endeavours, Mr Ahern’s base remains in his traditional stronghold of Drumcondra, where he still lives in his home on Beresford Avenue. Although Mr Ahern no longer qualifies for a Garda driver, there is a permanent Garda presence in a security hut beside the one-car driveway.
Having vacated his old constituency base of St Luke’s, Mr Ahern had in recent months taken an office in a business centre opposite the nearby Skylon Hotel. However this week, with workmen carrying out renovations at his home, it appeared as though Mr Ahern’s secretary, Sandra Cullagh, was emptying the office, possibly in advance of a move to a home office.
With his 08 black Ford Mondeo diesel parked on the roadside by his home this week, there was little sign of Mr Ahern himself, though he has been seen walking with a limp in the area in recent weeks and he was spotted at his office on Friday. He is also said to have been spending some time at a Portuguese villa owned by his daughter Georgina and her husband Nicky Byrne. Over the summer the former taoiseach took up gardening on an allotment in Malahide. In recent months there have been meetings with trusted old friends from his Drumcondra organisation, in Beaumont House and Fagans pub.
The meetings have sparked speculation that Mr Ahern is intent on meddling in constituency affairs despite his leaving FF. Some suggest that a new generation of Aherns may be preparing to enter the political arena.
But it’s unlikely you’ll hear from Bertie or any other Ahern next week as another austerity budget is rolled out. And it’s a certainty, no matter what the Budget contains, that Mr Ahern will not be overly affected.
Before his expenses as a former Taoiseach were abolished this January he had already received €367,000 in ‘expenses’ since leaving power in 2008.
The Government has also just moved to cut ministerial pensions, but despite this Mr Ahern will still receive €148,145 a year – the equivalent of €2,848 a week. In response to questions from the MoS, Mr Ahern’s secretary said his positions on the InterAction Council and the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy ‘are honorary and Mr Ahern receives no payment.’
ENDS
