Bertie Ahern

I

Introduction

Bertie Ahern, born in 1951, Irish politician, leader of the Fianna Fáil party from 1994 to 2008 and prime minister of Ireland from 1997 to 2008. While in office he worked closely with British prime minister Tony Blair in negotiating a peace agreement for the Northern Ireland conflict, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement) signed by the two leaders in April 1998.

Patrick Bartholomew (“Bertie”) Ahern was born in Dublin and educated at Rathmines College of Commerce and University College, Dublin. Ahern worked as an accountant before entering politics full time.

II

Early Political Career

Ahern joined the political party Fianna Fáil, and was first elected to the Irish parliament, the Dáil Éireann, in 1977, representing a district in Dublin. From 1978 to 1988 he sat on the Dublin City Council. Ahern was appointed party spokesman on youth issues in 1981. By 1982 he had risen to the post of opposition chief whip in the Dáil.

From 1986 to 1987 Ahern served as lord mayor of Dublin. In 1987 he became minister of labor in the government of Charles Haughey, a post he held until 1991, when he became minister of finance. In 1989 he took charge of the negotiations that allowed his party to remain in office in a coalition government with the Progressive Democrats. Ahern was elected leader of Fianna Fáil in 1994.

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III

Prime Minister

A

First Term

Fianna Fáil, in alliance with the Progressive Democrats, won a narrow victory in the national election of 1997. Ahern was elected prime minister, or Taoiseach (an Irish Gaelic term pronounced TEE-shock). At the age of 45, Ahern became the youngest-ever prime minister in the history of the Republic of Ireland.

Soon after taking office, Ahern entered lengthy negotiations aimed at resolving the ongoing political conflict in Northern Ireland, a province of the United Kingdom located on the island of Ireland. In April 1998 Ahern, along with British prime minister Tony Blair, signed the Good Friday Agreement. The agreement, which permitted the restoration of home rule in Northern Ireland, was widely hailed as a major contribution to the peace process in the troubled province.

However, persistent conflict among the parties in Northern Ireland led the British government to suspend home rule on several occasions, most recently in October 2002. Blair and Ahern again found themselves working to build momentum for the stalled peace process.

Ahern’s government narrowly won a vote of confidence in June 2000 after defending itself against accusations of corruption. The accusations coincided with the trial of Charles Haughey, the former prime minister and Ahern’s political mentor. Haughey was accused of obstructing an inquiry into secret payments made to politicians while he was in office.

Irish voters dealt Ahern’s government a setback in June 2001 by rejecting a government-backed referendum on the Treaty of Nice that would authorize the expansion of the European Union (EU). Many Irish voters worried that Ireland would receive reduced financial aid within an enlarged EU. (However, in October 2002 Irish voters approved a second referendum that put the EU’s planned expansion back on course.)

B

Second Term

Ahern led Fianna Fáil to another victory in the May 2002 national election, securing a second five-year term as prime minister. The election increased his party’s number of seats in the Dáil, but it fell short of giving Fianna Fáil an overall majority.

In March 2003 Ahern and Blair held intensive discussions with pro-Good Friday Agreement parties in Northern Ireland in an attempt to restore home rule to the province. Ahern and Blair made clear their belief that a lasting peace in Northern Ireland could only be achieved through the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, placing them at odds with the province’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a powerful opponent of the agreement. The Good Friday Agreement finally bore fruit when Northern Ireland’s two largest parties and longtime foes—the predominantly Protestant DUP and the primarily Catholic Sinn Fein—formed a power-sharing government in 2007.

In January 2004 Ahern took on another difficult task as Ireland inherited the rotating presidency of the EU. Ahern was faced with leading negotiations to draft a new EU constitution, regarded as essential for accommodating the ten new member states who joined the EU in May. A previous attempt to draft a constitution, in December 2003, had ended in failure. The final text of the constitution was approved by European leaders in October 2004, but ratification of the constitution required the approval of all EU member states. The resounding rejection of the constitution by voters in France and the Netherlands plunged the EU into crisis in 2005. Further votes on the constitution were put on hold, although Ahern claimed the constitution was not dead.

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