Bertie's Taxes and Timelines

It seems that the big political scandal of the week is the fact that our dear leader cannot get the revenue commissioners to give him a tax clearance certificate, the (far-fetched) implication being that since he needs one to be a TD, he may have to give up his Taoiseachship. I have a few thoughts on this point but I'm also very interested in how it relates to the broader issue of when Bertie really is going to go.

The opposition were up in arms this week about Bertie not being able to get the hallowed tax clearance cert. Some hay was made of the fact that they brought it up while Ahern was off in South Africa and I think it is fair to say that the attack would have been better if it had been made while he was in the country, or ideally in the Dáil. However there is certainly a good deal of merit to the issue. Unfortunately, the opposition and Enda Kenny in particular have overplayed it and ended up looking hysterical.

There is merit in the issue because the rules about tax clearance certificates are there for a very good reason. Ireland has an appalling history of tax evasion that goes right to the highest levels of government. There is nothing unreasonable or unfair about requiring TDs to prove that they are tax compliant, and even if there was something unreasonable or unfair about it, it is the law of the land and as such TDs and Senators must comply with it. There is no other group of people who are constitutionally mandated to pass laws, so it is perfectly acceptable that they should abide by the laws they have passed. Both ethically and legally, Bertie Ahern is under an obligation to prove that he has paid his taxes. However, the revelations this week have shown that he is not in a position to do so. Billy Kelleher had a fatuous rant on Questions and Answers on Monday about how only the Revenue Commissioners can decide if a person is tax compliant. They do this by issuing a tax certificate, which they have refused to do in this case, so I think we can take it that Bertie owes them (and by them I mean us, the taxpayers) a few bob. The holder of the most powerful office in the land must comply with the law, not just in relation to providing a tax cert, but he must pay his taxes like the rest of us. That is the central issue here and it is one that Bertie must address if he is to be taken seriously as a leader.

Where the opposition have shot themselves in the foot is by demanding a resignation over this. They ditched Bertie's finances as a political issue in the run up to the election and yet they are now seeking to make political capital out of it. That undermines their credibility seriously. If this is an issue that is big enough to topple a sitting Taoiseach, it's worth mentioning in an election campaign. Furthermore, even if their credibility on this issue was in better shape, calling for a resignation is over-egging the pudding. Political capital can be made here, but not that much. The best thing to have done would have been to call upon the Revenue Commissioners to fast track Bertie's tax assessment, make him get the tax cert as quickly as possible and then once it was done, nail him with questions about the nature of his tax settlement. There is no reason to think that the Revenue wouldn't be prepared to do this and, more importantly, it forces Bertie to resolve the outstanding ethical and legal issue. That way, the opposition could portray themselves as a moral watchdog, keeping Bertie on the straight and narrow by forcing him to do what he should have done himself. By ranting on about resignations and votes of no confidence they are doing nothing other than play to the gallery. I'm sure that keeps the party leaders sweet in the eyes of the faithful, but Gilmore just got his job unopposed and Kenny's position looks secure in the medium term. There is a much greater need for them to sell themselves to the electorate generally than to impress their own supporters with their aggressive rhetoric.

Following on from all of this, there is the issue of when Bertie is going to quit. He has always said that he'd go when he was 60, which is in September of 2011. However, the promise to leave only really became concrete in the last 18 months or so, since he repeatedly stated that 2007 would be his last general election. There was no need for him to do this. He could easily have dismissed his previous comments about leaving when he was 60 as aimless musings on his future. There seems to be no indication that he was under any pressure from within Fianna Fail to go. Unlike Tony Blair, to whom he is often compared in this regard, Bertie did not have a Gordon Brown figure waiting in the wings, desperate to take over. All in all, he was a popular leader of both his party and his country who had been remarkably successful in both roles for a decade. So why commit himself, in advance to leaving? It served no clear and obvious political purpose. Would he not have been better off to stay put until he felt like leaving? He could have gone in 2009, 2011 or, if he had won the next election 2015. There is little precedent for party leaders to give advance notice of a plan to step down and certainly there was no expectation of it. The question a lot of us are asking is why would Bertie intentionally cut short his own term of office?

However, perhaps this tactic is not designed to cut his term of office short. It may indeed be designed to prolong it. There can be no doubt that Bertie knew well in advance of the 2007 election that the Mahon Tribunal intended to look into his personal financial affairs and that there would be political fallout from that investigation. Even if nothing had been leaked to the Irish Times in September 2006, this information would all have made its way into the public domain over the course of 2007 when the tribunal questioned the Taoiseach.

There were always going to be two camps on this issue. The tribal nature of Irish politics is such that it was inevitable that a fault line would develop between the 'leave poor Bertie alone' tribe and the 'this unethical conduct makes the man unfit for office' tribe. The former are driven by the will to defend Bertie and the latter by the will to see the back of him. Bertie's prior commitment to leave office before 2011 changes the approach of both of these camps. The pro-Bertie side knows that it will not have to defend him indefinitely, since he already has one foot out the door. The anti-Bertie side has trouble getting the middle ground to support calls for his resignation since he's going anyway. The early announcement of his departure has totally shifted the ground upon which the Mahon Tribunal issues are being played out. By promising to leave during the term of this Dáil, Bertie has ensured that he will get to choose the point at which he goes. Had he not done so, there is a strong possibility that he would have been pushed out already by critical opposition forces and backbenchers who did not want to defend him against allegations of corruption indefinitely.

He obviously wants a few more trips on the merry-go-round. He wants to address both houses of Congress and I think there is some weight to the suggestion that he wants to be the European President. The Mahon Tribunal could have dashed both of those aspirations. By making his prior commitment to go, Bertie may well have dodged a bullet. This may seem a slightly fanciful theory, but consider for a moment the strength that Enda Kenny's calls for a resignation this week might have had if we were faced with the prospect of Bertie continuing on ad infinitum. Kenny may not have succeeded under such circumstances, but it seems likely that he would have got more support for his position. Maybe Bertie's plan to leave isn't as inexplicable and foolish after all.