MARY O’ROURKE, who served as a minister under former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, has described his criticisms of successor Brian Cowen as “the wrong thing to do”.
The Fianna Fáil TD for Longford-Westmeath, said yesterday she was amazed and astounded by comments made by Mr Ahern in an interview in the News of the World.
“Generally speaking previous taoisigh wait some time before they burst into disdain or praise of their ,” she said.
In the interview, Mr Ahern criticised Brian Cowen’s communications skills.
“We live in a 24/7 Ireland and while I don’t think the Taoiseach has to be out every hour, he should be out regularly,” Mr Ahern told the paper in an interview published on Sunday.
“The Taoiseach should be communicating the information that he has. These aren’t secrets, I don’t consider them State secrets,” Mr Ahern said.
“For whatever reason, the pattern that I had established stopped and decided only to do rare ones.”
Mr Ahern said the Government also decided not to do daily doorstep interviews (short interviews with a group of reporters on the way in, or out, of events).
“If you ask me, my view is you’re better doing it my way, but he opted not to do that.”
Mr Ahern, who announced last week that he would not run in the forthcoming general election, also implied in the interview that he would have moved far earlier to prevent the European UnionInternational Monetary Fund bailout if he were still taoiseach
“I agree with the comment on a lack of communications skills,” said Ms O’Rourke.
“But to take issue with a very recent event in which the Cabinet was involved, I did not think very highly of it,” the Longford-Westmeath TD added.
“In fact I thought that it was a wrong thing to do,” she said.