Common Ground Voices

Bertie Ahern accused of creating ‘mythology’ surrounding role in peace process

John Bruton’s work on Northern Ireland ‘has been forgotten’, says ex-minister, as author suggests Ahern should be ‘a little bit more generous’ to others

Bertie Ahern in 1997 with John Bruton. Mr Ahern succeeded Mr Bruton as taoiseach in June that year. Photograph: David Sleator
Bertie Ahern in 1997 with John Bruton. Mr Ahern succeeded Mr Bruton as taoiseach in June that year. Photograph: David Sleator
Mark Hennessy's picture
Mark Hennessy
Sat Nov 09 2024 - 14:24

The 1994-1997 Rainbow government of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left has never been given due credit for the role it played in laying the ground for the Belfast Agreement, former minister for justice Nora Owen has said.

Launching Under The Rainbow, a book by former government press secretary Shane Kenny, Ms Owen said the role played especially by former Fine Gael taoiseach, John Bruton, who died earlier this year, “has been forgotten”.

“We were working away solidly long before that. I likened it to setting the table. We set up the table. We put the chairs around the table. We even put the cutlery on. And we had got past the starter.

“And we were waiting for somebody to continue on and get the main course on to the table, followed by the dessert. That’s what happened in 1998,” she said, reflecting Fine Gael’s irritation at the credit given to Fianna Fáil’s Bertie Ahern.

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Former United States senator, George Mitchell, who chaired the talks that led to the Belfast Agreement, said Mr Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair “had the opportunity to enter the history books as the men who brought peace to Northern Ireland.

Broadcaster and author Shane Kenny speaking at the launch of his book Under The Rainbow in Hodges Figgis in Dublin
Broadcaster and author Shane Kenny speaking at the launch of his book Under The Rainbow in Hodges Figgis in Dublin

“But he went on to say they owed that opportunity to their predecessors who had begun the process and kept it going. And I have to say that is often forgotten, having been part of those talks myself,” Ms Owen said.

Praising the book, she said it captured well the excitement of those years when Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left formed the State’s first three-way coalition.

“It was a great honour for John to become taoiseach,” the former Fine Gael TD told the book launch at Hodges Figgis in Dublin, which was attended by Mr Bruton’s widow, Finola, and his brother and fellow cabinet member, Richard.

“He had long years of experience in the Dáil and the Senate and in all sorts of political areas and it would have been a travesty, that’s the way I feel, if he had never made it into the taoiseach’s office,” she added.

In pointed remarks, Mr Kenny, a former senior RTÉ journalist, was sharply critical of Mr Ahern – “even though I like him” – for the credit he said the former Fianna Fáil leader had claimed for bringing about the Belfast Agreement.

“I think he has to consider how he can be a little bit more generous to, as Nora said, the people who set the table and cooked the food and all the rest of it. Only the dessert was left for preparation,” he said.

He wrote 40,000 words of the book in the year after the rainbow coalition left office, but he had been provoked to finish it because of the way that Mr Bruton’s role had been ignored in the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Belfast Agreement.

“There wasn’t a single mention of John Bruton. That really prompted me to get out the notes, the bits of paper, the hotel booklets that I’d written things on,” said Mr Kenny, whose book is published by Gill & McMillan.

“George Mitchell said the opportunity for [Ahern and Blair] was created by their predecessors. And that is absolutely true. And it needs to be acknowledged. And what John Bruton achieved needs to be recognised,” he said.

Mr Bruton and Mr Blair laid the foundations for the second IRA ceasefire in July 1997 and Sinn Féin’s entry into talks six weeks later.

Bertie Ahern has “tried to make it appear like” he had been “really helping a lot with getting the IRA to see the light”, said Mr Kenny, but the IRA and Sinn Féin “had already seen it” because of the talks with Mr Bruton and Mr Blair.

“So, was there a Bertie effect here?” he asked. Quoting Mr Blair’s press secretary, Alastair Campbell, Mr Kenny said he recorded how Mr Blair “was not at all impressed” with what he had heard at his first meeting with Mr Ahern.

“He turned to Alastair Campbell and said that Bertie Ahern was just trotting out, endlessly, the Sinn Féin line. And he told him that he feared that the peace process had taken a setback. That’s there in Alastair Campbell’s Irish Diaries.”

“You don’t see that reported very much in the Irish press. But that’s the reality. Bertie likes to think, and continues with this mythology that he enveloped the whole thing,” Mr Kenny said, adding the period should be “carefully examined by historians”.

Finola Bruton said the book illustrated “just how all-consuming Northern Ireland was in those years” when the rainbow coalition held office. Violence was “completely anathema to him”, she said, adding her late husband “was challenging the cynicism and the sentimentalism, not just of people in this country, but of people in the USA [towards the IRA]. He would have made no apology for that”.