Does it not bother Fianna Fáil that when its activists were digging deep to pay off the party's debts, its treasurer Bertie Ahern was taking the party's money? Fintan O'Toolewrites.
EVERY STATEMENT of fact in what follows is based on Bertie Ahern's own statements in Dáil Éireann and at the Mahon tribunal. And all of it inevitably leads to two stark conclusions. One is that Bertie Ahern took money from Fianna Fáil at a time when the party was in financial crisis. The other is that the party trustees have a legal obligation to get that money back.
Bertie Ahern became treasurer of Fianna Fáil on January 28th, 1993, though he had informally assumed the role in the latter months of 1992. When he took on the job, the party was broke. So broke that Ahern took two drastic actions.
The first, as he told the Dáil in 1999, was to stop constituency fundraising: "Early in my term as treasurer we suspended local activities in constituencies so the money could go to the national organisation, which was in a poor financial state."
The second was to ask party workers to dig into their own pockets to bail out Fianna Fáil. "We set up . . . a loan scheme whereby party workers were asked to donate funds to put party finances in order . . . the scheme raised approximately £300,000. The majority of this money was by way of direct contributions and the balance was by way of interest-free loans."
In late 1992 and during 1993, therefore, Bertie Ahern as party treasurer banned constituency fundraising and got activists to cough up £300,000 of their own money.
But he himself broke both of these rules. His own constituency was raising large amounts of money. And instead of giving money to the party, he himself took money from it.
On his own evidence, three tranches of party funds went to him or his "life partner":
1. He received a cheque for £5,000 in December 1993. The donor is unknown, but the money came from a company rather than an individual. It was, according to Ahern, a "political donation for my personal use", but we know this money was not a personal gift. Otherwise, Ahern, as minister for finance, would surely have declared it to the Revenue. It was therefore intended for political use. But Ahern took half of it as cash and used the other half to open a building society account "for the purpose of saving money so that when I wanted a mortgage I could get one".
2. £30,000 was withdrawn from the so-called B/T account in March 1993 and given to Ahern's partner Celia Larkin towards the purchase of a house in her name. This money unquestionably belonged to Fianna Fáil. Ahern described it as "a Dublin Central constituency account in the name of Tim Collins . . . this was a Fianna Fáil account and it was administered by Fianna Fáil".
3. Further, unquantified, sums of money given to the party for political purposes also found their way into Bertie Ahern's pocket. He accepted at the tribunal that he "regularly received political donations which were to be understood as being capable of being used for personal purposes".
On the Taoiseach's own evidence, therefore, he and his partner received significantly more than £35,000 from monies that were raised by or donated to Fianna Fáil - well in excess of 10 per cent of the money that the party was simultaneously raising from its activists in donations and soft loans.
So what should Fianna Fáil do about this? Bertie Ahern knows the answer. On his direct instructions, the party general secretary wrote on October 6th, 1998, to Pádraig Flynn.
An allegation had emerged that Flynn had received a donation from Tom Gilmartin which he had failed to pass on to the party. The letter stated that "the trustees of the party have various legal and fiduciary duties towards the membership of the party. These duties include an obligation to ascertain whether funds were given to any person with the intention that these funds were to be applied for the benefit of the Fianna Fáil party." A party investigation into the matter was a "legal necessity".
As the instigator of that letter, Bertie Ahern clearly accepts that there is a "legal and fiduciary" obligation on the party trustees to establish what happened to money donated to or raised by Fianna Fáil but, on his own evidence, used for personal purposes.
We know by now that the senior figures in Fianna Fáil don't really give a damn about the "standards of austere integrity" that Bertie Ahern once promised to live up to. We know they are not bothered that the office of Taoiseach has been held up to ridicule and contempt.
But, surely, they care about Fianna Fáil itself. Surely they have some respect for the party activists who were digging into their own pockets in 1993 and 1994, for the local cumainn who were selling raffle tickets and running dances to keep the party they loved in business.
Or, if they have such contempt for themselves that none of this bothers them, can they be surprised that the contempt might be shared by others?