{"id":454258,"date":"2026-05-18T02:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T02:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/454258\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T02:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T02:54:16","slug":"maria-maynes-the-bertie-row-and-fianna-fails-u-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/454258\/","title":{"rendered":"MARIA MAYNES: The Bertie Row and Fianna F\u00e1il&#8217;s u-turn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Could it be that brandishing the word racism all the time is just not as effective anymore?\u00a0 That was my first thought when I read this week that Fianna F\u00e1il Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan had come to the defence of Bertie Ahern. The former Taoiseach hit the headlines for going a little bit further than simply appeasing an angry voter on the doors during the Dublin bye-election canvass.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI agree with you on the Africans. We can\u2019t be taking people from the Congo and all these places. I think there\u2019s too many from those places,\u201d Ahern said in the exchange \u2013 recorded without his knowledge \u2013 where he also admitted that he was concerned about second-generation Muslims.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">This article is premium content<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Get unlimited access to Gript<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Support Gript and get exclusive content, full archives and an ad-free experience<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"v-btn v-btn--block v-btn--has-bg theme--light v-size--large accent mb-6\" href=\"https:\/\/gript.ie\/membership\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Already a member? <a href=\"https:\/\/gript.ie\/?memberful_endpoint=auth\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign in here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could it be that brandishing the word racism all the time is just not as effective anymore?\u00a0 That&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[197137,895,61,1629,60,43,29716],"class_list":["post-454258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-bertie","tag-fianna-fail","tag-ie","tag-immigration","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-u-turn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454258","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=454258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}