It was the former Taoiseach, Charvet J Haughey, who dubbed Burlington Bertie Ahern ‘the most cunning, the most devious of them all …’, recalls An Fear Rua…

Now, the Squire of Kinsaley knew a thing or two about cunning and deviousness, so it was a real case of what Peig Sayers would have termed: ‘Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile’ - it takes one to know one!

No other episode – not even the stab in the back to The Longford Slasher’s bungled attempt at a Fianna Fáil nomination for the Presidency – has displayed Bertie’s innate qualities so publicly and so aptly as the debacle over the IR£60 million subvention to Dis Great Assosheeayshun Of Our, the related debacle of Eircom Park and the ongoing saga of Der National Sport Kampus Im Abbotstown, in county Dublin. As a constituency colleague of his remarked one time: ‘With Bertie, it’s not so much the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing … it’s more he hasn’t told the left hand that there is a right hand!’

How could any politician take a gift of IR£60 million to a major sports organisation and turn it into such an own goal of spectacular proportions ? With a series of zig zags and U-turns, Oul Super Dub Himself, Bertie, has succeeded in either offending, alienating or worrying everyone concerned. That includes the GAA top brass themselves who now realise the sixty million quid comes trailing not one string but several hundred strings, namely, the opening up to other sports bodies of every provincial, county and, possibly, club ground in the country! It also includes fellow Fianna Fáil members of the Cabinet, Fianna Fáil backbenchers, the Head Prefect Herself, Mary Harney, the PD Pouter, Liz O’Donnell and their Aggressive Democrat colleagues, the entire Opposition, the media, the general public and – last, but not least – the residents of the Croke Park area.



In the space of only three days, Burlington Bertie has rowed back and forth so many times on this issue that we no longer know which way he’s facing on it. It underlines once again – in the case of politicians at least – the perennial veracity of Sam Goldwyn’s remark that ‘a verbal promise ain’t worth the paper it’s written on …’

Now the GAA powers-that-be are left with not inconsiderable amounts of scrambled egg all over their faces. With this level of negotiation skills you wouldn’t send them around to your local newsagents to buy your daily newspaper, for fear they’d end up bringing back a bag of spuds instead. Poor Seán McCague must now be bitterly regretting his handling of the Burlington Congress. It would have been far better to have had no prior announcement by the Government, a clear-cut vote on Rule 42, based on a ballot system, with a re-count if called for, and the GAA might now have their sixty million without a whisper of protest from anyone.

Despite the recent thunderings of the national ‘meeja’, we should not overlook that a large majority – albeit not technically the required two thirds – of the much reviled delegates to Congress voted for a fundamental approach to the Association’s approach to opening up its grounds. Clearly, the GAA wants to open up. Rule 42 is on a life support machine and failing fast. The proper thing to do now is immediately to convene a Special Congress to allow a ballot vote on a motion similar to Roscommon’s, in the light of all the additional information now available to delegates.

AFR warns the GAA about getting too closely involved with politicians of any stripe. The problem with politicians is, once they are in a hole they never know when to stop digging. That’s OK for them, so long as they don’t bury the rest of us with them…