There's far more to Bertie's legacy than the dig-outs
Any analysis must also weigh up Ahern's crucial role in our constitutional maturation, writes John-Paul McCarthy
TV3's panel discussion last week on the peace process retold some old stories that had already been beaten into the metal of the historical thoroughfare.
Martin Mansergh suggested again that Charles Haughey initiated the whole peace process dynamic after 1990. Readers may like to know though that Haughey's last words on Northern Ireland are to be found in Justin O'Brien's book, The Modern Prince where Haughey (albeit anonymously) dismissed the consent principle as a trouble of fools.
Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey offered a few euphemistic reflections on the failure of certain parties to maximise the potential of the process. When decoded, this was just the old PIRA line about David Trimble's failure "to sell the agreement", an analysis that fails to mention the fact that Maskey's own party never actually signed the Good Friday Agreement on the day it was finalised, and that Trimble's commitment to the process ultimately destroyed him.
This programme was worth its 40 minutes though because of the genial, even playful, interaction between Bertie Ahern and Trimble.
Ahern touched on the constitutional aspects of the peace process, but seemed content to allow others do most of the talking.
His reticence may well be a product of the remorselessly protracted battering his reputation has taken since 2007.
Judge Mahon found easy prey when confronted by the chaotic private life of a man recovering from a traumatic separation. (And while his findings conjured up a media tsunami large enough to force a popular Taoiseach into retirement, Ahern's eccentric personal book-keeping seems almost comically serene when compared to the endemic dishonesty in the banking world.)
After that, the Lehman Brothers collapse and the implosion of his handpicked successor finished off what was left of Ahern's reputation.
There is an important story to be told though about Ahern's indispensable contribution towards our collective constitutional maturation after 1994, a contribution that must be put heavily in the weighing scales against his macroeconomic myopia and his dig-outs.
Simply stated, Bertie Ahern will most likely be regarded as the most progressive Fianna Fail Taoiseach since Jack Lynch.
We can see something of Ahern's sophistication by focusing on Articles 2 and 3.
These were the ugly ducklings in de Valera's legacy, involving a crude claim on something called the island-wide "national territory".
The Cadogan Group in Northern Ireland got their hands on the amended drafts of these provisions as they stood just before Albert Reynolds resigned in 1994.
Reynolds wanted to keep "the national territory" model, but modify it with meaningless references to "shared inheritances" and "diverse identities".
His draft Article 3.1 gave the game away though, stating: "Accordingly, the re-integration of the national territory which is a primary legislative objective of the Irish people shall be pursued only by peaceful means . . . "
For all his bluster about new beginnings, these drafts suggest that he wanted to retain most of the 1937 claim intact, using obscure language about "primary objectives" as culled from the preamble of the 1949 West German Constitution.
Reynolds' interest in legal precedents culled from the days of Konrad Adenauer suggested he thought Northern Ireland was like East Germany and that the guarantors of her borders were British versions of Stalin, or even Gorbachev. (The parallel usually disintegrates by the time we are asked to see John Major's cabinet as a latter-day Politburo.)
Within four short years, Bertie Ahern had taken an axe to this kind of thinking.
'Simply stated, Bertie Ahern will most likely be regarded as the most progressive Fianna Fail Taoiseach since Jack Lynch'
Ahern's constitutional analysis was more obviously sensitive to the fact that the main legal trend after the Second World War was to eliminate the concept of minorities rather than to protect them via territorial claims.
Taking his cue in all likelihood from the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Act, Ahern decoupled "territory" from any legal or moral claim of future ownership. His new Article 3 referred blandly to "the territory of the island of Ireland".
And he did something even more remarkable in that Article as well, in making it clear to any future pro-unity majority in Northern Ireland that the Republic retained the right to over-ride their vote. (It's often forgotten that Article 3 makes Irish unity contingent on two separate majority votes, thereby giving the Republic the chance to back out if necessary.)
Ahern gave future generations a veto over their unpredictable northern neighbours, a decision that looks impressive when contrasted with the sentiments of Reynolds' speech at the Cearbhall O Dalaigh law dinner in 1994.
Here, Reynolds rather breathlessly trekked through precedents from Germany, Cyprus, Yemen, China and Korea when explaining the theory of self-determination just announced in the Downing Street Declaration.
Though he warned SF-PIRA to drop the tantrums about the "unionist veto", his analysis assumed that unification was inevitable, as did his ambitious attempts to claim affinity with presidents Chun and Roh of South Korea.
Disdaining this weakness for unconvincing parallels with perished communist regimes, Ahern took Trimble up on his offer to end the island's internal cold war.
He declined to copy Reynolds' rather abrasive diplomacy. (In a TG4 profile of Maire Geoghegan Quinn, Reynolds exulted in having prevented Major from prefacing the Downing Street Declaration with the simple public statement: "I am a unionist." Reynolds threatened to collapse the talks unless he got his way.)
Such behaviour played like a flash of forked lightning round the weary partisans.
He would play a far more mature game after 1997, much to our collective benefit.
And not even Judge Mahon can obscure that.
JP McCarthy holds a doctorate in history from Oxford
Originally published in
