Bertie may not be what he seems to be

A previous controversy about Bertie Ahern centred on whether he should have letters after his name. Now the mystery has deepened to include the letters in it.

Long famous for his five-letter surname, it appears that when the future Taoiseach was born in Dublin's Rotunda Hospital 51 years ago, he was registered as seven-letter "Ahearne".

The extravagant use of vowels was confined to his birth certificate, however. He left hospital as we know him today - a mere "Ahern," the same as his parents.

According to the Dublin Daily newspaper - which yesterday published a facsimile of the certificate - the discrepancy has been blamed on a "clerical error".

But the fact that the error was never rectified may be greeted by opposition parties as further proof that the Taoiseach is never quite what he seems to be.

In 2001, Fine Gael raised questions about Mr Ahern's CV which as well as listing his accountancy certificate from the Rathmines College of Commerce, also mentioned the London School of Economics.

Then, a spokesman insisted that the Taoiseach did not consider himself a graduate and had never used letters after his name, but "believes he did a correspondence course with the LSE at one stage".

However, the LSE reference was subsequently dropped from official versions of the CV.

It's not just his registered surname that the Taoiseach shortened, of course.

Although preferring to be called Bertie and even, in his private life, "Bert", he was christened "Bartholomew" after the patron saint of cobblers (a fact that will not surprise critics of his performances at Dáil question time).

On the other hand, supporters may claim that having so dramatically shortened his registered identity from "Bartholomew Patrick Ahearne" is an economics qualification in itself.