{"id":448061,"date":"2026-05-14T07:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/448061\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T07:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:22:08","slug":"soon-after-it-detonated-the-bertie-bomb-took-on-a-life-of-its-own-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/448061\/","title":{"rendered":"Soon after it detonated, the Bertie Bomb took on a life of its own \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bertie Ahern<\/a>\u2019s shocking doorstep detonation in Dublin Central was no accidental explosion. <\/p>\n

It was a precision exercise.<\/p>\n

Operation Howaya Keepin\u2019 was meticulously planned and executed. <\/p>\n

But Paul Murphy<\/a> of Solidarity-People Before Profit rumbled Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s top-secret project and revealed all in the D\u00e1il yesterday. <\/p>\n

He disclosed to wide-eyed TDs how The Soldiers of Destiny callously planted one of their infamous Bertie Bombs in the epicentre of a busy byelection as part of an elaborate manoeuvre designed to take the heat off profiteering landlords, greedy property developers and themselves.<\/p>\n

Apparently, what happened is that Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a>\u2019s notoriously invisible Intelligence Division installed Bertie outside a woman\u2019s door in the Dublin Central constituency and rigged him to go off as soon as she emerged to talk. <\/p>\n

This woman was a plant. <\/p>\n

She was in on the caper, covertly recording the flashpoint incident of the campaign on her phone. She would then lash it up on social media after the dust settled.<\/p>\n

That Bertie Bomb was most unpleasant, unlike former taoiseach Ahern, who was very pleasant when jauntily greeting and then whisperingly agreeing with the woman whose vote he was canvassing. <\/p>\n

Deputy Murphy described some of the carnage to Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> during Leaders\u2019 Questions. <\/p>\n

\u201cYour former leader and taoiseach Bertie Ahern has engaged in disgusting racism in Dublin Central, saying \u2018we have too many immigrants\u2019, saying \u2018the ones I worry about are the Africans . . . we can\u2019t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places\u2019, saying he \u2018worries about the next generation of Muslims\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that it was The Bert himself blowing up like this on the hustings \u201cmakes it very blatant what the agenda is \u2013 scapegoat immigrants, divide ordinary people\u201d, concluded Paul. <\/p>\n

And why would he do that?<\/p>\n

\u201cSo nobody blames Bertie Ahern, Fianna F\u00e1il and the landlords and developers you\u2019ve allowed to profit from the housing crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l Martin has a lot on his plate these days. He\u2019s getting it in the neck from all directions on all sorts of issues. <\/p>\n

Still and all, bet he didn\u2019t think his week would include being ambushed by his disgraced predecessor lunging from the depths of retirement to be caught on camera banging on about mass immigration, unwelcome African arrivals from places like the Congo and his worries about Muslims. <\/p>\n

Then again, maybe he did. Maybe it\u2019s all part of the gameplan. <\/p>\n

Paul Murphy certainly thinks it is. <\/p>\n

Deploying the Bertie Bomb was a premeditated move to distract the voters of Dublin Central from the terrible living conditions that many people housed in rented council accommodation are forced to endure. <\/p>\n

He held up grim photographs to prove his point and said the Government should intervene to reverse recent rent hikes imposed on tenants living in substandard flats.<\/p>\n

And in the midst of a byelection where these issues could be highlighted, the Bertie Bomb goes off, blowing the uncomfortable immigration debate into the political mainstream.<\/p>\n

Pay no heed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this is an act of mass distraction,\u201d declared Murphy.<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach dismissed the conspiracy theory. <\/p>\n

Leaving aside the fact he does not approve of Bertie\u2019s comments, they were part of a random conversation which subsequently ended up in the public domain. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not, therefore, a distraction process by anybody here,\u201d Miche\u00e1l pointed out, because who could anticipate that happening? <\/p>\n

He decisively distanced himself from the controversial remarks in the D\u00e1il. He did likewise at an earlier event, but was reluctant to criticise his former leader when asked if the comments were unhelpful. <\/p>\n

The Taoiseach played down the incident. <\/p>\n

\u201cSorry . . . It\u2019s an exchange,\u201d he shrugged, looking a bit nonplussed. \u201cIt\u2019s an exchange on the doorstep.\u201d <\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l was absolutely right, for that is what it was. <\/p>\n

He is a wily and vastly experienced politician with a lot of general elections under his belt. Like Bertie, he knows how to canvass and how to behave on the doorstep. <\/p>\n

It opens the question of whether the former taoiseach was telling the voter what he thought he wanted her to hear, safe in the knowledge he could confidently confide in winning detail that he agreed with her without anyone else ever having to know. <\/p>\n

And it brings to mind the story we had last week about the canvasser for Aont\u00fa who called to Bertie\u2019s Drumcondra home looking for a vote, only for the one-time Uachtar\u00e1in of Fianna F\u00e1il to tell her he actually voted for the Aont\u00fa candidate<\/a> in a recent general election and he thinks the party and its leader, Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn, is great. <\/p>\n

Maybe he was speaking from the heart on both occasions. <\/p>\n

Not where the Bertie Bomb is concerned. <\/p>\n

Once the video went public, he ran from the seat of the blast as fast as he could.<\/p>\n

As he told our political correspondent Jack Horgan-Jones: \u201cI\u2019ve no problem with people from the Congo<\/a> or Africa or anywhere else. I\u2019ve good friends around Drumcondra, there\u2019s a lot of the clergy in from Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l confirmed to the D\u00e1il and Paul Murphy that Bertie had \u201cresiled\u201d from recorded remarks. <\/p>\n

But they are out there now. <\/p>\n

But back to Deputy Murphy, whose efforts to improve the lot of council tenants living in terrible conditions while their rent is increased were lost in his eagerness to hold up Bertie\u2019s telling doorstep conversation as proof of Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s collusion with the profiteering classes.<\/p>\n

It also gave him a chance to obliquely run through the towering lowlights of Bertie Ahern\u2019s political career. <\/p>\n

The Taoiseach must have been thrilled to hear Bertie\u2019s greatest hits played again, years after he thought he binned them.<\/p>\n

Paul was in his element.<\/p>\n

People from the Congo didn\u2019t take payments from developers to blow up the property bubble and they were never found by a tribunal to be untruthful in explaining how \u20ac400,000 in today\u2019s money passed through their bank accounts, he declared. <\/p>\n

And Muslim children didn\u2019t crash the economy and they never rolled out the red carpet for developers and vulture funds, sowing the seed of the current housing disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat people say when they don\u2019t think they\u2019re being recorded is actually more valuable than what they say when they do know they\u2019re being recorded\u201d he said, moving back to conspiracy territory. <\/p>\n

Bertie detonating on a Dublin Central doorstep was a value-added event and Paul told the Taoiseach he can see that now. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt suggests a dirty game used on doors by Fianna F\u00e1il to divide and rule ordinary people, to have them not blaming the people you represent \u2013 the developers, the landlords, the people who get rich from the housing crisis. <\/p>\n

Instead, it is better to blame the people from Congo or wherever else.\u201d<\/p>\n

For much of his long political career, Bertie Ahern was dogged by that quote from his mentor and uber master of the brown envelope, former taoiseach Charles Haughey who famously described him as \u201cthe most skilful, most devious, most cunning of them all\u201d. <\/p>\n

(Funny that, but the colour of the envelope was never an issue back in those freewheeling, pre-tribunal dig-out days.)<\/p>\n

But not even he, never mind the machinations of Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s invisible Intelligence Division, could mount \u201can act of mass distraction\u201d as fanciful as Operation Howaya Keepin\u2019 by planting a Bertie Bomb on some woman\u2019s doorstep in an attempt to sway the course of a byelection. <\/p>\n

And anyway, by the way things are looking, their campaign is bombing all by itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bertie Ahern\u2019s shocking doorstep detonation in Dublin Central was no accidental explosion. It was a precision exercise. Operation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[894,15049,61,60,31650,43,12636],"class_list":["post-448061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-bertie-ahern","tag-dail-eireann","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-miriam-lord","tag-news","tag-oireachtas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}