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Bertie’s back to business

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

THERE’S no doubt Bertie Ahern has left his mark on Irish history. He led the country through the Peace Process and was Taoiseach during the country’s most successful economic period.
During his time in office he transformed himself from anorak man into a statesman respected throughout Europe and around the world.
However, Bertie has always managed to retain the common touch and his personal vote in his Northside constituency has ensured two Fianna Fail seats in the last three general elections.
It’s almost three months since he left the office of An Taoiseach so Northside People went in search to find out what Bertie Ahern has been doing with his new found freedom.
“It’s good to be back working in my constituency in Dublin Central,” he said.
“I’m back doing me clinics and working on the issues on the ground. I’m out and about all the time.
“Just last night I had a delegation down in the office concerned about double yellow lines and parking around Croke Park. This morning, I had a woman onto me complaining that the medical card was being taken off her. It’s a big change from running the country but sure it’s good all the same.
“I think the local people are glad to see me back.”
He added: “I used to work almost seven days a week and anything up to 80 or 90 hours a week so it’s good to finally get more time for meself and my family.”
Deputy Ahern, who turns 57 this September, is unsure whether he will run in the next general election.
“It depends when it is,” he laughed.
“I will see out my time as a TD. I always said that I would stay in politics until I turned 60. But sure you’d never know when the election is called.”
Bertie plans to canvas in the lead-up to next year’s local elections although it is still unclear which Fianna Fail representatives will be in the running.
He also set the record straight about the last general election where he gave Cyprian Brady a much-needed ‘dig out’ by urging supporters to give him their second preference votes instead of fellow FF candidate Mary Fitzpatrick, who polled twice as many first preference votes than Brady.
Bertie’s preferences were enough for Deputy Brady to creep into a Dáil seat, 169 votes ahead of Cllr Fitzpatrick.
“I could never understand why there was an issue made about where my second preference votes went the last time,” he explained.
“Cyprian Brady had been working with for 16 or 17 years. Why wouldn’t I give them to him?
“To think of it, I think Mary was in America when Cyprian was working for me.
“It would have been very unfair for me not to give him the majority of my votes.”
It’s no secret that Bertie has set his sights on the world political stage since he cast his role as Taoiseach aside.
Just last week, he accepted an invitation from the World Economic Forum to form part of the Global Agenda Council on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.
“This is a big one for me alright,” he said.
“It’s like everything new, it’s a little scary especially since there are so many well-known names attached to the council.
“There will be a lot of meetings and networking and it will take up a lot of my time, but a lot of it can be done from home.”
Bertie may now have to invest some of his own salary in a little makeup for his public appearances now that he no longer has a team of three and a budget of around e30,000 for cosmetics.
“Ah sure I only needed to use that for all the camera stuff,” he joked.
“If I was to cut the budget I would have had to fire the make-up team, one of which had done the job for 30 years. I couldn’t do that to those people.
“I used to laugh you know, I’d go into RTE and get me make-up done for about three or four minutes and I’d be done yet the presenter would have hours of work done on their appearance. No one ever knows about their budgets but sure I guess that’s part of it too.”
Bertie had an eye on the European Presidency, but the position may not ever become available following the recent ‘no’ vote in the Lisbon Referendum.
“If the Presidency came up I would have gone for it but it’s not an option now,” he said.
“I’m not really interested in anything else like the European elections.”
However, Bertie is in demand in some quarters - public speaking engagements.
He’s got some stick in the media over his new website, bertieahern.org, which promotes his success in politics, his involvement in the Good Friday Agreement and the Power Sharing Agreement in Northern Ireland, his time as President of the European Council as well as his “leadership roles on key global issues such as increasing aid to developing countries and tackling the spread of HIV AIDS”.
“I’ve been on the circuit for a long time,” he told Northside People.
“It’s part of the course of being in politics. I get a few things but I am nowhere near the scale of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Colin Powell. They are on huge money altogether.”
He added; “I don’t see why so much of an issue has been made of the website either. When you’re Taoiseach you have your own website so when you leave you lose that.
“When they pull the plug, you lose everything. I’m just doing what every other former leader did by setting up my own website to promote meself.”
You could say that Deputy Ahern picked a good time to leave office before the recession reared its head and before the Government’s attempts to swing a ‘yes’ vote on Lisbon failed miserably, but he doesn’t see it like that.
“Ah sure I’ve always loved an auld challenge,” he said.
“I’d love to have got the chance to turn it all around for the country again despite the fact that I’d have almost certainly have been blamed for everything that happened with the economy and Lisbon. But I’ve got blamed all me life so I’m used to it by now.”

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