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 Irish Republic.

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 (or Belfast) 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—joined 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.

C.

Third Term

Ahern’s Fianna Fáil won a narrow victory in the national election in May 2007, as voters rejected the opposition’s calls for change and chose stability in the person of Ahern instead. Fianna Fáil still lacked an overall majority of seats in the Dáil, and Ahern formed a coalition government that included the environmentalist Green Party for his third term in office.

In April 2008 Ahern announced he would step down as prime minister in early May. His announcement came a day after he began a court challenge to limit the work of a tribunal investigating allegations of corruption in the planning process in Ireland, including an inquiry into Ahern’s financial affairs. Soon after the announcement, Fianna Fáil formally designated Brian Cowen to succeed Ahern as leader of the party.