Same as it ever was.

Well, there would have been differences over Northern Ireland pre-GFA but that’s no longer a point of disagreement between most of FF and most of FG. Similarly with the “bedroom issues” (contraception/divorce/abortion).

Ahern still beats the hell out of anyone in the Bush administration, so there’s that…

Faint praise. Ballymagash Urban District Council would beat the hell out of anyone in the Bush administration.

Same as it ever was.

Ahern still beats the hell out of anyone in the Bush administration, so there’s that…

According to his older brother interviewed on RTÉ Radio yesterday, he’s a qualified Cost and Management Accountant. He studied part-time while working, as far as I know at Rathmines College of Commerce (now part of the Dublin Institute of Technology).

What I can’t figure is: it seems that something like the present-day equivalent of 1M Eur passed through various bank accounts under his control (personal and party) over a four to five year period. What use was the money put to? There are no obvious trappings, as there was with Haughey.

I have a theory that Ahern desperately wanted to always show off a “professional accountant” (as he once described himself) and financial wizard exterior. He could not bear to be shown up as a financial incompetent who could not handle a simple bank account without help; hence the spun-out stories, the lies, excuses and prevarication.

As someone who can’t keep his current account out of the red, I sympathize. If the man just put up his hand and said “I’m just crap at managing my money; my accounts for the period in questions are in a state of utter chaos and I don’t even know where to start.”, I would have taken him to my bosom.

Ahern’s “accountancy” qualifications have been called in question before. His CV claims UCD and the London School of Economics as his colleges, but he have never been found in a list of graduates. Some years ago a claimed “Oxford qualification” turned out to be a short course, and was taken off the Fianna Fail website. His last job before politics looks suspiciously like that of a wages clerk in Dublin’s Mater Hospital.

Another fantasist, like Haughey, but living a different fantasy. Bertie Ahern could not claim to be one of the aristocracy, so his fantasy was to be a technocrat who rose by merit in the world of high finance, while still being a main of the people. Like Haughey, his fantasy was his ultimate downfall.

Yes, it’s time Tammany Hall was restored to its former grandeur.

He has done the State. Some service.

Sounds like he ought to be running for Mayor of New York City.

They were the young people making the decision to join the party, go to cumann meetings, attend Ogra FF bashes, and generally be active members at a time when FF was at the heights or depths of the Haughey era, depending on your perspective.

One thing that depresses me about Irish politics – or more especially about the two bigger parties – is the degree to which their support is based on family tradition rather than any judgment about ideology or about the particular current leadership. (But then at this stage, is there any ideological difference between the two parties?)

It leads to a kind of football-fan, City vs. United, politics that leaves me cold. Party X in opposition derides every action of Party Y, but then do exactly the same once they get into government.

That applies to both parties.

It’s quite possible that they joined the party because of family tradition or because they felt closer towards the party’s perceived ideals, rather than because of any personal attachment towards Haughey.

In some cases, it might even have been in spite of Haughey (I’m thinking here of someone like Mary Hanafin), in the same way as someone like David Andrews remained in the party all through the Haughey era in spite of the mutual antipathy between himself and Haughey, because he felt a greater loyalty to the party.

(Similarly, on the other side of the house, Garret FitzGerald stayed in the Cosgrave cabinet despite the actions of the Heavy Gang and the Donegan/Ó Dálaigh affair.)

To my mind, assuming that every single member of FF at every level was complicit in Haughey’s crookery simply because they were a member of the party is bigotry, much like assuming that every member of FG in the 1930s was a supporter of fascism because of O’Duffy’s leadership.

And believe it or not, I kind of like Cowen relative to the others. It must date from the time when Edenderry seemed cool (where I grew up, because it had a cinema) so that aura extends to the rest of Offaly.

“Rising up” in the sense of being a backbencher from 1984 (when he replaced his father in a by-election) until Haughey’s departure, yes. But it wouldn’t be all that much of a rise.

He wasn’t appointed to ministerial office until the replacement of Haughey with Albert Reynolds, and he’d been one of the second “Gang of 22” who had publicly voted to replace Haughey the previous year.

Fine Gael might be wiser to concentrate their criticism on his handling of the economy over the last four years and on his previous ministerial performances rather than coming up with tenuous links to Haughey which are unlikely to have much credibility with the public.

Speaking personally, the fact that Ahern’s sycophants in the Sunday Independent spent the last year attacking Cowen is a plus in my book.