When Bertie Ahern finally ran out of road in terms of his ability to spin any more yarns about the origins of the massive sums of money  going in and out of his accounts in the 1990s, the tributes to him in the millionaire owned press were quite unreal.

The Good Friday Agreement and the Celtic Tiger economy were said to be triumphs of his eleven years as Taoiseach.

In a few media outlets, when given the opportunity, I tried to inject a reality check into the discussion by outlining his real legacy as we in the Socialist Party see it.

Bertie Ahern, of course, was intimately involved in issues relating to the North and the economy. But he was really a lucky politician in the timing of his coming to power.

The paramilitary campaign in the North had been well and truly exposed as the dead end it was and the Republican movement was desperately looking for a way out of the morass.

Rather than provide a permanent solution to the underlying problems in the North, the Belfast Agreement institutionalised sectarian division in the structures it set up. A real solution can only come about as a result of the working class of both communities elbowing aside the sectarian politicians and uniting to resolve the crucial issues that confront them.

  For working people, the real legacy of Bertie Ahern and his government will be felt for a long time to come and in a very negative way. House prices quadrupled during his tenure as Taoiseach as speculators and developers were allowed to profiteer unrestrainedly. As a result, young working people will be in the shackles of huge mortgages for thirty to forty years.

The public infrastructure, such as public transport and new schools needed for exploding new communities, has been lagging pathetically behind.  Now as recession threatens it will be clearly seen that the massive wealth which workers created in the boom was squandered – much of it salted away abroad by speculators and multinational corporations.

The crisis in the Health Service is another part of Bertie Ahern’s legacy. His Government lied about being prepared to restore 3000 public beds to our hospitals and was, instead, conniving to hand over public lands to big business investors seeking to set up private, ‘for profit’ hospitals.

Bertie Ahern’s governments were among the most right-wing in the history of the State in relation to the economic agenda they pursued. Under him, key infrastructure, such as  the telecommunications industry, was privatised, as, of course, was Aer Lingus, the national airline.
Because of his working class origins, Bertie Ahern was used cynically by Fianna Fail for decades as a handy mascot.  He postured as the ordinary man on Hill 16, or on the soccer terraces  whom you would meet in the local pub for a drink. In fact, of course, he was an agent for the right wing economic agenda dictated by the big business backers of Fianna Fail.

He occupied an influential role in Fianna Fail since his election to the Dail in 1977. He was a right hand man for former Leader, Charles Haughey, not once raising any issue about Haughey’s corruption.  When it was obvious that Fianna Fail Councillors in Dublin in the 1980s and early ’90s were up to their necks in planning  corruption, not once did Ahern, or any other senior members of the party, raise an objection.

With Brian Cowen taking over as Leader, we can expect the current government to continue more or less the same policies. The gaping hole in Irish political life during Bertie Ahern’s time and for the moment under Cowen, is the absence of a workers’ party that would offer a radical alternative to their neo liberal capitalist agenda and win mass support. The need for the creation of such a party gets more urgent by the day.