This article is from page 15 of the 2011-01-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
THE SUCCESS of the Northern Irish peace process will be Bertie Ahern’s legacy in years to come and when the current financial troubles are forgotten he will be remembered as a good Taoiseach.
That is the opinion of Kilnamona man Michael McTigue, who got to know the former Taoiseach very well when he served on the National Executive of the Fianna Fáil party for more then a decade.
“I got to know him well enough when he was Minister for Finance and I was on the National Executive of the party and I was there when he was first elected Taoiseach. He was a great man to hang around and chat after a meeting – he always seemed to have time for everybody,” said Mike.
“Mind you he was always a very disheveled looking character when he was Minister for Finance, he was probably one of the worst dressed people going into Dáil Éireann at the time.
“He had an old shinny suit on him with the pockets bulging with notes about different things.
“Nothing was too small for Bertie, he would always make time for people. I used to always get a phone call from him on Christmas Eve, and if he didn’t get me his secretary would arrange another time for him to call.
“But I think the Good Friday Agreement would have to be his greatest achievement as Taoiseach. I remember I was at his mother’s funeral when he was whisked off by helicopter back to Belfast.
“He was knocking heads together up in Northern Ireland while his mother was dying. He came down for his mother’s funeral and at the end he was whisked back over the border again.
“I remember being at his mother’s funeral and in the middle of all of that he remembered everyone’s name – that’s the sort of guy he was,” he added.
“I mean he managed to solve the most intractable political problem in western Europe, something that has been an issue for many centuries, that is some achievement.”
Despite the current economic trouble, Mike believes that Bertie Ahern will be remembered fondly by the people of Ireland.
“Right now he is taking a bit of a beating but in the long term it will have to be seen in a positive light.
“We are in a mess now and people need someone to blame but when all of this is done they will realise that we have a roads’ network now that we never had before and even now there are twice as many people working now as there were in the 1980s,” he added.