'There's an image of me that I'm not liked, which I find nonsensical'

THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW:Everyone benefited from the boom, says Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, and while Fianna Fáil made mistakes, so did everyone, except for him

ASKED TO GIVE an example of a mistake he has made, the Minister for Justice says he can’t think of anything. “See, I’m arrogant by saying no,” he cringes.

In an effort to prompt him, I offer an embarrassing example from my own career. He acknowledges it as a silly error, but it doesn’t help his own recollection. “I can’t think of one honestly. I can’t think of a one.” He sighs and quietly repeats: “I can’t think of one.”

What about his robust heckling of the opposition in the Dáil during the controversy leading up to Willie O’Dea’s resignation as Minister for Defence in January? Ahern was criticised for his rowdy behaviour, as pressure built on O’Dea to give a fuller explanation of the circumstances behind a sworn statement made in defamation proceedings that he later accepted was untrue.

Did he regret that? “No, because Willie O’Dea asked me to go in and speak on his behalf. I actually had to go to Willie, which was a hard thing to do, I said to him before the debate, ‘look Willie, do you mind if I don’t go in?’

“I said I’m Minister for Justice, this is about an affidavit. So I decided – because I didn’t go in, because it’s not an easy thing to say to a colleague, because if you were in trouble the following day, you’d want someone to go in and defend you and help you – I’d sit beside him.”

He says he didn’t lose any sleep over the subsequent criticism of his performance. “I was caught on camera. If you panned the entire place, sure, everyone was shouting.”

He laughs and performs an imitation of an unnamed person: “Dermot Ahern, an officer of the court. The behaviour of him.”

Sitting in his office in the Department of Justice on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin, Ahern has his back to the bullet-proof windows.

The Louth TD lives in Blackrock near Dundalk. Ahern met his wife Maeve, a psychotherapist and former Ulster women’s windsurfing champion (a hobby they share), when they were both very young.

“I went out with my wife on her 16th birthday. We met at a barbecue in Carlingford.” They have two daughters and celebrate their 30th anniversary this year.

His phone vibrates. “There she is texting me now,” he says. He describes himself as an “avid texter” who has tried every type of high-tech mobile but has now “gone back to the bog standard phone” because he finds the battery lasts longer.

He doesn’t Tweet himself but admits he’s signed up to Twitter just to follow the latest news and results from Dundalk FC. The soccer team has 487 followers, one of whom – dahern3 – has no followers himself.

Routinely described as the Government’s bootboy and the Cabinet bruiser, he insists this perception doesn’t reflect the reality of his personality. “Anyone who knows me properly knows that I’m not a bootboy and knows that I’m actually quite a mild-mannered person.”

Asked about the perception that he doesn’t glad-handle backbenchers, in the manner a future leadership contender might be expected to, he volunteers another perception: “There’s also an image of me . . . that I’m not liked by people, which I find nonsensical to be honest.”

AS THE MURPHY REPORT into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin was released last November, Ahern warned that “a collar will protect no criminal”. Was it difficult for him to say that? “No.” Not at all? He laughs a little and says “no” again. As a Catholic? “Yeah, well, I mean, I have been abused by a 28-year-old curate off the pulpit in my own constituency in Drogheda for the Civil Partnership Bill. Somebody half my age.” He’s 55.

The controversial Bill, which he has sponsored, has provoked “a bit of a campaign” against him. “I do leave my religion behind me and I genuinely mean that. While we all have our beliefs and our own religions, I don’t think it should cloud our judgment.”

He says an element in Fianna Fáil will probably never be reconciled to the terms of the proposed legislation. A number of party senators were on their feet expressing concern about aspects of the Bill when former first minister and DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley visited the Seanad just last week.

“I don’t know if you’ll reconcile them. A lot of them are implacably opposed to it,” Ahern says. But their proposal to introduce a so-called conscience clause that might allow, for example, registrars to opt out of facilitating civil partnerships is “absolutely not a runner” because registrars and other civil servants “can’t have an à la carte attitude to their job”.

The initial media focus was on the element of the Bill that covered civil partnership for same-sex couples, which he concedes was partly “our fault”.

He has agreed to change the name of the Bill to take into account that it also includes a redress scheme for heterosexual and same-sex couples who break up after cohabiting for at least five years.

Farming groups, such as the Irish Farmers’ Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association, have criticised the proposed legislation. They are mistaken, Ahern says. “The IFA and others are misunderstanding what this piece of the civil partnership legislation is. It is a right to go to court. It’s not a right to get part of the estate. You have to convince the court that you’re entitled to some relief and it’s up to you to prove,” he says.

Siblings who live together are reasonably well protected under law, both from a taxation and succession point of view, he says, although he might ask the Law Reform Commission to look at the area in future.

Years ago he said he didn’t think any member of a political party would be worth their salt if they did not want to be leader, and that remains his position. “The day you say you’re not interested in it is the day you’re dead politically.”

He’s more than happy in the Department of Justice, however, and “I won’t lose any sleep if I’m never leader of Fianna Fáil or Taoiseach”. He describes himself as a team-player and strong on loyalty. He says he’s been lucky in political life but has a life outside politics.

He says Cowen has done a “marvellous job” and that his chairing of Cabinet meetings is “very embracing”. People do not really appreciate how hard he works, says Ahern. “Brian is maybe a shy person. Behind the way in which he has been built up to be a great raconteur and a great character, he’s a private person,” he says.

“I don’t think people appreciate what being taoiseach is. It’s bad enough being a minister but being a taoiseach must be absolutely all-consuming and things have to give.”

Ahern says the Greens compare favourably to the Progressive Democrats as coalition partners. “When the PDs were in government they used to have a crisis every second week, some of it of their own making. The Greens are not like that. The Greens are much more strategic.”

Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan is a very bright person, says Ahern, and Minister for the Environment John Gormley is a very good party leader.

Ahern got into politics through soccer. After graduating from UCD and then qualifying as a solicitor he went back to Dundalk and got a job. Then he started to play with the local team he’d played for before going to college.

The field they played on was “bulldozed overnight by developers...they built houses”. He became chairman of a group that lobbied councillors – “we picked them off one by one” – to buy another field by compulsory purchase order for £30,000, “which was a king’s ransom in those days”. The agreement was that the group would repay £10,000 over five years. Local Fianna Fáil workers soon spotted his potential and he became a councillor the next year, in 1979.

Ahern told a meeting of his local Fianna Fáil cumann in 1986 that he was not interested in running for the Dáil. “I didn’t want to be a TD. I was happy being a solicitor. I had a good practice and a reasonably good life: double income, no kids. We were going on two Continental holidays when not many other people went on two, so I was reasonably happy. I was doing an awful lot of windsurfing at the time, it has to be said.”

But Ahern was persuaded to change his mind by Charles Haughey. “I was very impressed by him. He was an extremely good parliamentarian and in any of my dealings with him I found him to be a gentleman to his fingertips.”

He lost friends when he was elected as a TD in 1987, because he started moving in different circles. “The friends I have now are in politics although in reality you can’t say you have friends in politics. The only friends you have in politics are your family . . . that you can actually trust,” he says.

POLITICIANS HE HAS admired include former SDLP leader John Hume, because the language he used about uniting people and territory struck a chord. “He would be one that I would sort of look up to.”

And among the current crop? There’s a pause. He smiles and shrugs a little, before speaking about his great respect for former British prime minister Tony Blair. “I was incredibly impressed by the interest that he took in Ireland and the time he gave. Very, very, very impressed with him.”

The reaction to the fact that Ahern made blasphemy a crime in the Defamation Act was “ludicrous and exaggerated”, he says, particularly from some elements in the media. He had taken the Attorney General’s advice that the Defamation Act could not go ahead without it, he adds. A phrase in the constitution clearly mandated the Oireachtas to have a law about blasphemy, he says, tapping on the table as he recalls the wording from memory. “I didn’t bring the blasphemy thing in because I was a right wing conservative, as that fella said.” He’s referring to Sunday Tribune columnist Diarmuid Doyle, who wrote that he suspected the law was being introduced because Ahern was a “Catholic fundamentalist”.

Ahern previously suggested a constitutional amendment to delete the prohibition on blasphemy when the referendum on children’s rights takes place. Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke, who chaired the cross-party committee that produced the report proposing a referendum that could result in a new article 42 in the Constitution, said the children’s referendum is so important it should be held on its own. Does he agree? “She’s probably right.”

AHERN SAYS HE IS keen to progress another referendum – promised in the renewed programme for government – to consider the establishment of a Court of Civil Appeal. This would deal with the backlog of cases in the Supreme Court. Is he 100 per cent enthusiastic about the Children’s Referendum? “Yeah, yeah but we have to just get the right terms of it.” Does he think the wording will change much? “I don’t know.” When does he see it happening? “I’m not sure.”

He does not frequent the Dáil bar, although he says he goes in for coffee and perhaps a drink or two following a late sitting. A leading ministerial colleague once joked the ministerial car was wasted on Ahern, because he didn’t really drink. “I do drink. I drink socially with my wife.”

Is there any way back for Fianna Fáil , given its now consistently low position in opinion polls? “I don’t think we’ll be punished. The people aren’t fools. I think they see what’s happening in Spain and Greece and Germany and the UK. If we hadn’t taken these decisions earlier we’d have much worse problems. So I would never second-guess the intelligence of the Irish people.”

The fallout from the financial crash has been difficult for Fianna Fáil members, he concedes, although “there’s no huge revolt about it”.

“They understand that if we made mistakes it wasn’t just us that made mistakes. Let’s be frank about it, the country had a party. We hadn’t money for 800 years and for 15-20 years the country had a bit of a party and now we have to pay for it.

“There’s a whole load of people who’ll say, ‘well I didn’t benefit’. We all benefited. Wages went up dramatically. Without the property bubble we wouldn’t have been able to pay the teachers, the doctors and the nurses the salaries. We wouldn’t have been able to invest in our infrastructure, which we have. Look at our roads at the moment.

“We wouldn’t have been able to put money aside in a Pension Reserve Fund. We wouldn’t have been able to reduce the national debt from 133 per cent to down to about 25 per cent. We wouldn’t have gone from one of the worst standards of living in the EU to one of the best standards. Even today we still have one of the best standards of living.

“So there’s a bit of collective amnesia about it but at the same time I do think that people will understand that what we’ve done is the right thing and we will see the consequences.”

He describes the Dáil as a microcosm of Irish society, with TDs having the “same blemishes” as everyone else in the country. He says he would not like to see economists and academics coming into the Oireachtas under a list system.

His parents were deceased by the time he became a full minister, which saddens him. His father, a teacher from Cork who got a job in Dundalk, would have been “particularly chuffed”, he says. “My mother, who didn’t want me going into politics, would’ve been impressed because at least I was able to get one over on her.”

Ahern is the third of four children. He has two sisters and one older brother, Tim, a solicitor who is prominent in amateur dramatics.

"He is a very good actor. I always say to him, 'how do you do it?' And he says, 'what are you talking about? You do that every day, particularly when you're on Questions and Answersor Prime Time. You're a better actor than I am'."

EARLY YEARS

Born February 2nd 1955 in Drogheda, Co Louth

Educated at St Mary’s College, Dundalk, University College Dublin (BCL) and the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.

CAREER

First elected as a TD for Louth in 1987 and was made assistant government whip the following year. In 1997 he was appointed Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs. In 2002 he became Minister for Communications, the Marine and Natural Resources. In 2004 he was made Minister for Foreign Affairs by the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. In 2008 he was appointed Minister for Justice by Taoiseach Brian Cowen.

FAMILY

Married to Maeve Coleman. They have two daughters and live in Blackrock, near Dundalk, Co Louth.