Ghosts of Lowry and Haughey come back to haunt Taoiseach
September 27, 2006
Ghosts of Lowry and Haughey come back to haunt Taoiseach. Check it out:(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) After Bertie Ahern's emotional performance, the question remains: was it proper for a minister for finance to accept money for personal use? writes Stephen Collins , Political Correspondent
The Taoiseach threw himself on the mercy of the electorate in his long and emotional interview on television last night. His political future now rests on whether the natural sympathy of the Irish public for Mr Ahern's personal difficulties will outweigh continuing questions about the propriety of accepting almost 50,000 from a group of business friends.
In the shorter-term the political focus will be on the Progressive Democrats. The attitude taken by the junior Coalition party to the central issue that Mr Ahern was given the money in 1993 and 1994 for his personal use by a group of businessmen will dictate the course of politics over the coming months.
It will be no surprise that the Opposition parties have made it clear that they will continue to pursue the issue when the Dail resumes today, after the summer recess, but it is the attitude of the PDs that will determine whether the Government suffers real strain.
While the detail provided by the Taoiseach in his interview went some way to meet the demands of his critics, there are still a number of outstanding concerns. For a start, the propriety of the minister for finance of the day accepting such a substantial sum for his personal use from a group of business people, even if they were his close friends, is an issue that will not go away.
Over the past few days the Opposition parties and the media have thrown the Taoiseach's own remarks on this subject in relation to Michael Lowry and Charles Haughey back in his face.
However, Mr Ahern last night refused to accept that taking the money had placed him under any financial obligation.
"The difference of talking about somebody taking millions and somebody taking hundreds of thousands in exchange for contracts and other matters, and taking what is a relatively small contribution from friends who had a clear understanding they would be paid back. I do not equate those. If I was to take several hundreds of thousands of pounds or several million from people where I had no association with, or people that were totally business interests, that would be totally, totally wrong."
The Taoiseach's contention that what was involved was "a relatively small contribution" raised a few eyebrows, as 50,000 was a substantial sum of money as far as the vast majority of hard-pressed and highly-taxed Irish workers were concerned in 1993. The fact that those who gave him the money were personal friends was clearly an important point for Mr Ahern, as he saw that as a factor that did not place him under any obligation to them.
Aside from the principle of someone in his position accepting money, there is the issue of what constitutes a loan as distinct from a gift. Mr Ahern maintained that all the money he had received was in the form of loans that amounted to "a debt of honour". The problem is that 13 years later, neither the principal nor the interest had been repaid to any of those who gave him the money. So can the money be legitimately described as a loan or was it a gift? "If money given to Mr Ahern remains unpaid after 13 years and in respect of which no interest was ever paid either, then it can only be regarded as a gift, and a gift that in all probability would have been liable to tax," the Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte, maintained last night. He quoted the Taoiseach's response to the suggestion in 1996 that the money paid to Michael Lowry might have been a loan.
Mr Ahern told the Dail that "there would have to be incontrovertible written evidence of that at the time and arrangements having been made for its repayment . . . The making of such a personal loan on more favourable conditions than would be available from any lending institution would clearly represent a personal favour that ought to be declared."
The Opposition will certainly be raising questions about how some of the coterie of Mr Ahern's 12 friends, who provided money to him in 1993, have ended up in positions of influence courtesy of the Government. Curiously, Mr Ahern said that he had appointed the people to State boards precisely because they were his friends and for no other reason.
David McKenna was appointed to the board of Enterprise Ireland while Des Richardson, who was the Fianna Fail fundraiser in 1993, was appointed to the board of Aer Lingus on which he still continues to serve. The perk of free air travel which applies to Aer Lingus board members is a highly-prized one which made it the most sought after board in the semi-State sector. Another of the contributors, the former Dublin city councillor, Joe Burke, was appointed by the Government as the chairman of the Dublin Port Company.
The Taoiseach takes a very different attitude to those appointments than the Opposition.
"I've checked that and I repeat my advice is I've broken no codes, ethical, tax, legal or otherwise, and I've checked that to the best of my ability. These were close friends, they were not big business interests that were removed from me, they were people that I saw, if not on a weekly basis, on a very, very regular basis, most of them would be known to be very, very close to me."
There were some other curious remarks by the Taoiseach towards the end of his interview, which may be explained by the strain he was under, but which beg further elaboration nonetheless. At one stage he referred to a fundraising event in Manchester from which he got GBP8,000. He later referred to paying gift tax, but it was not at all clear why that tax bill had been incurred.
Mr Ahern also referred to a bank account of his own into which he lodged money after his separation in 1993. "I think people are perhaps looking at my own money that I'd saved and put back into, I didn't have an account in my own name during the separation years.
"I opened an account after the separation work was over. And I put back in my own money and then paid out, perhaps that's what people are talking about. But the impression that I got between GBP50,000 and GBP100,000 and maybe far more from just a few people wasn't correct."
Over the years the Taoiseach's apparently confused account of certain events has got him into trouble, and also got him out of it.
For most of last night's interview he was clear about the message he wanted to convey, but he did leave a certain confusion in his wake as always. All the ambiguities will be teased out in the coming days.
Copyright 2006 Irish Times. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
Related Tags: money personal, money, ahern, Ahern, Taoiseach, taoiseach
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