Ahern says main concern on Mahon is his good name

FORMER TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern said his main concerns with the findings of the Mahon tribunal were whether it found he was “corruptible” and the implications for his good name.

Mr Ahern was speaking in an interview with Ursula Halligan in her new series This Is, broadcast on TV3 last night.

He didn’t mind what the tribunal said about his personal finances and his bank accounts.

“All that stuff is immaterial. How I rented the house or didn’t rent the house etc. What matters is the point that I was corruptible in taking money in a row between two developers that I hardly knew,” he said when asked about the findings.

“That issue was the substantive issue – was I involved in taking a bribe to do a man down? That’s the bit that matters to me. I am not too worried about the rest.”

He would be upset with such a finding because “I know it’s a lie”. “I know I got nothing in benefit or in kind or in any other form, so that’s the only thing that matters.”

Mr Ahern said his assertion during the tribunal that some sterling had come from backing horses was “a Bertieism that went wrong”.

“I was going through the figures. It came down to a very small amount, about €2000, and he said, ‘How could you have got that income?’ and I said, ‘Well I could have easy got that on the horses’ . . . and it came out I got £20,000.

“Listen, I wouldn’t believe I got £20,000 on the horses,” the former taoiseach said.

Mr Ahern also said he knew the identity of a person who had been trying to destroy his political career. “There was one person working overtime, you know, out to damage me, and I know who the person is.”

He said the laws of libel meant that he could not name the person. “But there was one person working night and day to screw me up. And I think I know why and I think I know how . . . ” he said.

Asked why the person may have been out to get him, he said: “Maybe along the way, maybe they got things wrong and maybe they had to be punished a bit for that too. And maybe they set about then to screw you up.

“If you can’t prove it you can’t say it, but you can still know it,” he said.

Mr Ahern spoke of his disappointment that Tánaiste Mary Coughlan and Miniser for Finance Brian Lenihan had been speaking about him behind his back at the end of his time as taoiseach.

“If they had come into me and said some of the things I know they were saying against me, I could have taken it. I know what they were saying. You are not around as leader for 14 years and your intelligence wasn’t good. So I know what they were saying.”

They were “getting jittery and nervy and you know the stuff that people do”.

“Listen, I forgive them all but if you’ve something to say to Bertie Ahern, I’d always rather when people say it to my face,” he said.

On RTE radio yesterday Conor Lenihan said Brian Lenihan had not spoken badly to him about Mr Ahern. He said he was a friend of Mr Ahern, “so if he were bad-mouthing him he wouldn’t do it to me”.