The information that has been put together by the Planning Tribunal regarding the financial affairs of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the 1990s is highly instructive.
In December 1993 some business friends of Mr Ahern who was then Fianna Fail Minister for Finance, gave him £22,500. It was supposedly a loan to help him pay some debts but hadn’t been paid back by 2006, 13 years later.
In April 1994 Bertie Ahern lodged £30,000 in cash to a Special savings account in allied Irish Banks. In August he lodged £20,000 to a bank account in his children’s names. This £50,000 was supposedly from savings which he had kept in a safe up until then.
In October £24,838 was lodged to his account in Allied Irish Banks supposedly more “loans” from business friends and a “gift” from business people in Manchester.
In December 1994 a Manchester-Irish businessman brought a briefcase with about £30,000 to Bertie Ahern’s office supposedly to pay for the renovation of a house which hadn’t yet been bought.
In one year that makes a total of around £150,000 going through the hands of a politician who was a senior government Minister. In 1994 £35,000 would buy you a reasonably comfortable three bedroom house. The average industrial wage was around £10,000. This gives an idea of the scale of the cash amounts involved.
At this time and ever since, Bertie Ahern has been pushed by Fianna Fail, and liked to portray himself, as a regular working man who lived like the rest of us, and knew what it was like to struggle to survive - the man wearing an anorak who attended football matches and had a pint with the lads in the local pub. What a massive charade that was in view of what we now know. Which ordinary worker could amass funds like that to help get over some difficulties?
During 1994 while these huge wads of cash were going through the hands of the leader of Fianna Fail, ordinary PAYE householders in Dublin were battling against a new water charge that had been introduced by local Councils at the beginning of the year. They were massively oppose to this new charge, correctly seeing it as a new tax that would rise inexorably if allowed to be put in place. A major boycott of the water tax was in place. In the autumn of 1994 communities in South Dublin felt under siege as water inspectors from the local Council were trying to disconnect the water supply of boycotting householders. The fact that this charge of about €120 per year was causing decent taxpayers such concern pointed to the fact that the big majority didn’t have amounts of cash to spare to fund new taxes.
There was no support for these taxpayers from Fianna Fail politicians. The boycott was met with contempt from Fianna Fail ministers including Bertie Ahern. Is this any wonder, and is it any wonder that these politicians lived light years removed from the lives of ordinary working people when we see the story of Bertie Ahern’s cash. How could they possibly know what it was really like to be a working class person struggling to make ends meet.
The anti-water charges battle went on throughout 1995 while more large amounts of mysterious money went in and out of Bertie Ahern’s accounts. Hundreds of householders were dragged into court as the Councils tried to frighten them into giving up the protest.
However the campaign with mass support fought on and in December of 1996 forced the then Fine Gael Labour government to abolish water charges and showing the tremendous strength of people power. That power really needs to be mobilised again now on many issues but especially to clear away the cynical gang of establishment politicians and political parties whose primary concern has been to feather their nests and represent the forces of speculation and big business as seen so clearly in the tribunal revelations.
