ANALYSISNo FF TD seems to have a problem with Bertie Ahern - a sad commentary on the state of Irish politics, writes Stephen Collins.
THE EVIDENCE given to the Mahon tribunal over the past two days has strained the Taoiseach's convoluted account of his personal finances close to breaking point. The big question is what impact, if any, the growing holes in his story are going to have on the political life of the country in the coming months.
The deafening silence from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party is as striking as the tribunal evidence itself. Not one of his TDs has put their head above the parapet to express even the mildest concern about the standards adopted by their leader when he was minister for finance during the mid-1990s.
In fact, the opposite has been the case. A string of senior Ministers and TDs entered the fray to castigate the tribunal and accuse it of exceeding its remit or of having an agenda. The response of the chairman of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, Seamus Kirk, to the latest revelations was to accuse the Mahon tribunal of "abusing the authority they were given".
It is a sad commentary on the state of Irish politics that not one of his TDs has dared to express in public a modicum of concern about Ahern's truly astonishing behaviour. Not only did he raise a substantial amount of money for personal use when he was the second most senior member of a Fianna Fáil-led government, but party funds were apparently used for private gain. Yet nobody in the party seems to have any problem with that.
It has become increasingly evident there are parallels between the way Ahern and his mentor Charles Haughey ran their political and personal financial operations. The scale of the money raised by the two men may be different but they both raised substantial amounts from business friends for personal use and, in both cases, money intended for the party ended up in their private accounts.
One big difference between the political lives of the two men is that Haughey was repeatedly challenged by people in his party on the issue of standards in public office. The issue of "low standards in high places" beset his career as minister and later as taoiseach and it was what prompted the repeated challenges to his leadership in the early 1980s. It was not just leadership rivals like George Colley and Des O'Malley who had the courage to question his standards; backbenchers like David Andrews, Jimmy Leonard and Hugh Conaghan, from different parts of the country, did the same and suffered politically for taking a stand.
By contrast it appears that there is nobody at senior level or on the backbenches today who is willing to take any kind of a risk for standards in public life. Many Fianna Fáil TDs will privately concede they do not believe the Taoiseach's version of events but they are not prepared to make their views public.
A constant refrain from Fianna Fáil backbenchers is that Ahern's personal finances is not an issue on the doorsteps. The conclusion they draw from this is that it is not a problem they need to concern themselves about. Of course, the implication is that if the voters do begin to get worked up about the tribunal revelations, it will then become a cause for concern.
It is ironic that in an age when the behaviour of politicians is supposedly governed by a raft of rules and regulations, nobody on the Government side is prepared to make a judgment of any kind on the use of public office for private gain. Yet back when there were no laws about political standards, the issue generated real passion and debate in the political system.
Despite the unquestioning backing of his party and his Coalition colleagues, Ahern will face real difficulty in retaining his authority with the public in the weeks and months ahead. The contradiction between the story told by his former constituency secretary, Grainne Carruth, and the facts will have to be faced by Ahern himself.
How he will deal with the fact that £15,500 in sterling was lodged into a building society account on his behalf, when he has denied up to now that he made any sterling lodgements, is something that only time will tell. However, if the tribunal judges treat him in the same way as they treated Carruth, they will have to remind Ahern that he could face a €300,000 fine and two years in jail for misleading them.
The Taoiseach will probably be called to give evidence in the middle of April, shortly before his trip to Washington to address the US Congress. Regardless of how his next tribunal appearance goes, there is unlikely to be anybody in his party with the stomach to raise questions about his position until that address is out of the way.
After that, the next political imperative will be the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty; again the argument will be that it would be inopportune to raise the issue until the referendum is won. Given that Ahern appears to have pushed back the referendum date until June 12th, that should allow him to make it to the summer. Once he has got to the recess and his tribunal evidence is completed, he is safe until the autumn and probably beyond. Of course, a defeat in the referendum could open up questions about Ahern's continued leadership as the blame for such a defeat would be widely laid at his door. Still, given the deference shown to him by his parliamentary party to date, it is by no means certain that anybody would challenge the Taoiseach, even after a referendum defeat.
The real problem is that the country may be stuck with a Taoiseach who has lost the moral authority to govern at a time of deepening economic crisis, when the Government will have to persuade the public to accept the necessity for tough decisions that will impact on their daily lives.
Stephen Collins is Political Editor of The Irish Times