The Taoiseach's part in securing the peace process will long be remembered
THE TAOISEACH'S announcement of his resignation was timely. Even if none of his Ministers felt able to broach the issue with him, his own political antennae must have told him that his colleagues were finding their own credibility being damaged by his appearances at the Mahon tribunal.
Last Wednesday's unheralded announcement has also removed the pressure on him to explain either to the Dáil or at a special early hearing of the tribunal apparent discrepancies in the evidence recently submitted to it. The outstanding issues can now be dealt with at later sessions of the tribunal free of the burden of his appearing there as a serving Taoiseach.
Finally, his announcement has appropriately been followed by very positive comments both from at home and abroad about his achievements during more than a decade in office.
And he can also now look forward in a more relaxed way to his appearance a couple of weeks hence before the joint houses of Congress in the US - the first such address by a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach.
I would endorse everything that has been said about Bertie Ahern's role in the Northern Ireland peace process. He handled skilfully Sinn Féin's entry into constitutional politics, allowing them to run for a time with the ridiculous "pan-nationalist front" idea, before gradually detaching himself from this illusory concept in time to establish a relationship of well-earned trust, first with the UUP and then with the DUP.
Of course, because Britain is the sovereign power in Northern Ireland, the principal running in these prolonged negotiations had to be made by Tony Blair and his aide Jonathan Powell. But Bertie Ahern, addressing his share of this task without any of the nationalist baggage carried in quite different ways by Éamon de Valera and Charles Haughey, (although not by Seán Lemass, Jack Lynch or Albert Reynolds), notably smoothed the path for the British with both sides in the North. Long into the future that will be remembered of the retiring Taoiseach.
Somewhat surprisingly, in the immediate aftermath of his resignation, rather little was said about his skilful handling of the European constitution issue during his presidency of the European Union - when he rescued that project from the Italian failure to secure agreement by all EU heads of government to a final text.
That achievement, together with the second Nice referendum, compensated for the damage done to Ireland's European reputation by the government's earlier failure to mount an effective campaign for the first Nice referendum. It is possible that the memory of that earlier mistake had some influence on his decision to resign before the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - the passing of which many feared might have been made more difficult if some people with a limited interest in EU matters decided to use the occasion to express their unhappiness with his continuance in office.
If, as is widely thought, he would like to be appointed to the post of president of the European Council that is to be created by the Lisbon Treaty, he would have a personal, as well as a political, interest in a successful European vote. However, there could be some reluctance by other governments to consider his candidature, unless by the time this appointment comes to be considered the Mahon tribunal has given him a clean bill of ethical health.
Moving to the domestic scene, I doubt if Ahern will receive from historians the same approval for his performance that he is likely to be accorded for his work on Northern Ireland and the EU. True, he united what for almost three decades had been a deeply divided political party, but his appointment of Charlie McCreevy as minister for finance, and his subsequent failure to exercise control over that minister's 50 per cent increase in current spending in the three budgets between December 1999 and December 2001, did huge damage to our economy.
At a time when we were approaching both full employment and a single currency, which would rule out the devaluation option, this pushed up our cost of living at twice the rate of the rest of the EU. Almost overnight we shifted from being one of the lowest cost countries in Europe to becoming second only to Denmark.
As a result we totally lost our competitive edge. Our exports of goods (other than Viagra!) have virtually stagnated and our external payments deficit has risen year by year - and would now be out of control but for a huge rise in exports of services.
How did the government and its leader, Bertie Ahern, manage to avoid blame for the damage they did to our economy around the turn of the century?
First of all, until the second half of last year, the effects of this failure were masked by the fact that the real economic growth of the 1990s was replaced by growth financed by a huge, and ultimately unsustainable, increase in credit. So the electorate felt no pain until well after Fianna Fáil had won the general election.
As a result, the opposition parties despaired of convincing the public of the hash the Government had made of the economy and chose instead to go along with the illusion of economic success, so as to vie with the Government's unrealistic electoral promises. Meanwhile, many businessmen seem beguiled by personal tax concessions into ignoring the damage done to competitiveness by government-generated inflation.
But a third and crucial factor was certainly Bertie Ahern's quite extraordinary personal popularity, deriving from his unique capacity to relate personally to everyone he meets.
As for the problems posed by the Taoiseach's handling of his personal finances, these are issues for another day. In due course, the whole question of the financing of elections by contributions to individual politicians must be addressed.