What female politician could inspire such terrifying adoration as Bertie Ahern, asks Ann Marie Hourihane
NEXT MONTH we celebrate the 90th anniversary of Constance Markievicz's election to the House of Commons in 1918. All right, she didn't take her seat, but she was the first woman to be elected to that or any parliament. At the time of writing we have 22 female deputies in the Dáil.
Cue a lot of hand wringing, and a lot of expensive research, about why women have so singularly failed to enter parliamentary politics in any significant numbers. You know the type of thing. Is it the childcare? Is it the selection processes? Is it women's natural timidity (as if . . .)?
A nice young man on the The Week In Politics seemed quite upset about it all. How come we only have 22 female deputies in the Dáil, a century after the suffragettes, 90 years after Markievicz won? The answer is being played out on our television screens every Monday at 9.30pm. Irish politics is a cauldron of male passions, of jealously guarded heroes, of bitchery, and of a love that dare not speak its name but is perfectly happy to go leafleting seven nights a week.
Ah, the Bertie years. I suppose it depends where you are coming from. A lot of people have found that the RTÉ series on our former taoiseach, Bertie (RTÉ 1, Monday nights), reminds them of The Sopranos. The real talking point for the general public has not been the dig-outs. I mean, how many reconstructions of brown envelopes, be they ever so plump, being passed over bars can one nation usefully see?
No, the main talking point has been the boys from St Luke's, who are very interesting indeed. The programme - despite the presence of Ahern's beautiful daughters, his gentle ex-wife, his charming sister Eileen, and brother Noel - has left us with the St Luke's boys as its emotional heart. And what a seething, hard-working, jealous heart that is.
And this is why, for many of us, the television series Bertie is reminiscent not so much of The Sopranos but of Sex And The City. With Ahern as Mr Big - mysterious, unknowable and emotionally unavailable - and the boys from St Luke's as Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte. No, the boys from St Luke's are Carrie, Carrie, Carrie and Carrie, because they are all obsessed with Mr Big.
"They were interested in Bertie Ahern," said one Fianna Fáiler, "and nothing else." The kernel of the St Luke's gang had formed around sport, both watching it and playing it. "We knew how to handle ourselves," said Ahern. And you could see the compulsory bonhomie of sport even in the old footage: "Get ready to say hello to Bertie, lads." Where shall we start, as these men talk about their leader? With, "He has cavernous depths which no one has ever, ever seen"? Or, perhaps, "Bertie was like Cúchulainn, tied to the rock of the Irish pound and everyone else attacking him."
There are those of us who have called St Luke's Misogyny Towers for years. But we weren't too far into episode one before more objective observers were beginning to wonder how an ambitious female Fianna Fáiler in the Drumcondra of the 1980s might have had a hope in hell of getting anywhere with this all-male machine.
"I suppose," said interviewer Steve Carson to Chris Wall, "that Celia was very important to this operation?" It is difficult to describe what happened next. There was a pause, perhaps a movement of the eyes. These television silences are tiny, but unmistakable. "No" came the reply, like a portcullis coming down. Again. This will sound strange to anyone who did not see the programme, but it was in many ways a shocking moment. Not a word of kindness for broadcast.
I hope this is fair. Editing can do funny things to what you eventually get to say on television, and for all we know Mr Wall could have sung Celia Larkin's praises for 12 unincluded minutes. But what followed indicated that this was probably not the case.
"I would say that the majority of us wouldn't be that mad about her," said Paddy Duffy. " . . . In the social circle at times it could be quite tense and difficult."
There was some talk then of how Ahern did exactly what Larkin told him to, about how she controlled everything, about how the St Luke's boys, poor innocents that they were, were forced to skirt round her.
As the boys dragged Bertie back to their lair, snarling as they went, you could hear a couple of thousand female hearts turning to Larkin as they never had before. Because we knew then that no amount of Hermes handbags, big cars, beauty salons or houses for her aunties could compensate her for what she had had to endure from these besotted men.
It is men thus besotted who have run Irish politics for generations, who have given their lives to it, whose candidates have done best in it. Where is the female who could inspire and then mobilise such naked, selfless, terrifying adoration? Bertie has moved on to other things - and not voluntarily either - and one cannot help wondering whether the St Luke's boys still meet up these days to talk about him as they always have, just like Carrie, Carrie, Carrie and Carrie.