TWO VICE-PRESIDENTS of the Fianna Fáil party abstained in last night’s vote of senior party officers on whether to recommend the expulsion of Bertie Ahern from the party.
Kathryn Byrne, from Dublin South East, and Louth senator Mary White both declined to vote in the decision on whether to put forward a motion expelling Bertie.
That motion to expel him will be put to the party’s National Executive at a meeting next Friday, alongside motions to expel former EU commissioner Pádraig Flynn and a number of other councillors implicated in yesterday’s Mahon report.
TD Dara Calleary, speaking on RTÉ’s Prime Time, said White had defended Ahern’s record within the party, pointing to his work in bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
He said White had spoken of “her respect for what Bertie Ahern had done for the peace process – she felt that was a huge contribution.”
He also recounted that White had noted how “no finding of corruption had been taken” against Ahern, who led the party for 14 years and was Taoiseach for 11.
White had not returned requests for comment this morning.
The Mahon Tribunal’s final report, published yesterday after a mammoth 14-year inquiry, rejected Ahern’s explanations for the source of lodgements totalling over IR£165,000.
It also found Flynn had accepted a ‘corrupt’ payment from developer Tom Gilmartin, intended as a donation to the party but used by Flynn personally, and implicated three former Dublin councillors for corrupt behaviour.
Findings of corruption were also made against the late former TD, Liam Lawlor.
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