Maman Poulet

I’m waiting on the publication of the Oireachtas Register of Members interests by the Standards in Public Office Commission (they were on industrial action today so no phones answered!)

RTE has information on the disclosures made by Bertie Ahern amongst others. Regular readers will recognise the Bertie Earner and how last year our Iar-Taoiseach went on 16 foreign trips including visits to Nigeria, Honduras, and New York and took up a position writing for the News of the World, on the subject of sport. Oh and of course there was the buke.

It seems that the Bertie Earner can earn Bertie over €29,000 per speech according to the register of interests. This the income received from gigs booked through the Washington Speakers Bureau.   Currently there are four types of speech listed on Bertie’s page on their site.

• Peace through Inclusive Dialogue: Ireland’s Journey

• Prime Minister as CEO [assume he does not mention signing blank cheques for cashing by his previous CEO or indeed keeping cash in drawers in office and not having bank accounts himself.)

• Leadership in Changing Times: What it Takes to Succeed

• The Future Role of the European Union on the World Stage

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Update: Bertie Ahern is home just in time for the speech it seems – expected to arrive in City West 45 minutes before Cowen took to the podium.

I had today in my diary as one of the days Bertie Ahern, our Iar Thaoiseach, was due to be away on a Bertie Earner.  I previously posted on this event at Molloy College in New York which had to be cancelled following his accident resulting in a broken leg. This weeks Irish Echo reports that all systems are go for the event which begins today at 9.45 am New York time.

Ahern is the main speaker at the Long Island university’s Joseph F. Maher Leadership Forum, an event that will serve as the curtain raiser for the new Irish Studies Institute at Molloy, which has its campus in Rockville Centre. …His speech will be entitled “Peace Through Inclusive Dialogue: Ireland’s Journey.”

Miriam Lord in  last Saturday’s Irish Times  covered other Bertie earners including a recent trip to  Central America – Honduras specifically – where Senor Bertie delivered a keynote lecture to the Honduran National Business Council. ‘It was entitled ‘ The Celtic Tiger: The Irish Model of Development.’ Miriam of course notes the farce that is talking about the Tiger when its a mangey cat! No sign of that speech on the website of the Office of Bertie Ahern

Unless Bertie is flying home tonight and travelling straight out to City West to the 72nd Ard Fheis in the morning it looks like he’ll miss the ‘lavish’ praise to be heaped upon him. I’ll keep my eye out just in case!

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• New for 2009 – The Bertie Earner (mamanpoulet.com)

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Bertie Ahern says that the media don’t seem to care much for parliamentary reporting anymore? Deaglan De Bréadún (subs. required) reporting a speech yesterday by Mr. Ahern says that the media are more interested in celebrity than parliament.

…In an address to the Irish Parliamentary (former members) Society at Leinster House, Mr Ahern said politicians were sometimes dismissed as irrelevant, but they had been responsible for the key milestones in the development of the country.

It was difficult for politicians to compete with “the glitter of celebrity”, he said, given that the media had less time today for “serious parliamentary reporting”….

…More needed to be done to promote the work of the Dáil and Seanad to the public: “It is particularly hard for us to compete for attention with the glitter of celebrity. And the media has less time today for serious parliamentary reporting,” he said.

“It also has to be recognised that, while there can be moments of high drama, the process of legislating and debating is unexciting and uninspiring much of the time.” Mr Ahern added that there were “serious issues at play in our parliament” and politicians had to keep trying “to raise people’s awareness of what we are about”.

This a parliament that sits publicly for less days each year (yes I know about committees and agree they need more coverage) and from a Taoiseach and government who have reduced the number of days and times that they will take questions on current events from the opposition. The government are surrounded by backbenchers who can’t ask real questions and have their speeches written for them by others. Bertie has been taking Thursdays off for ages now to open pubs and cut ribbons and the like. If the Oireachtas sat more often there might be more to report!!! Stinks of hypocrisy I’d say. Bertie’s parting words are getting curiouser and curiouser…

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As promised earlier this week and I know it’s old news now but posterity and all that!

The infamous interview that Senator Eoghan Harris gave on the Last Word on Wednesday when Bertie fell on his sword – and Harris’s spat with Michael Clifford.

(I’ve also learnt how to cut and edit audio files tonight with some freeware – it was too big to upload in one go so I got the best bits into two files – I’ll be a podcaster yet!)

Senator Eoghan Harris in grief mode with a swing at the nasty bloggers.

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Or click this or here to download.

And then Matt Cooper introduced Michael Clifford of the Sunday Tribune into the conversation and the sparks began to fly!

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And while we’re pondering Eoghan Harris and the planet he resides on – go read World By Storm’s excellent dissection of his utterings in Hot Press.

PS: I’m not sure about Wordpress 2.5 and audio files and whether these will stay live for long – so if they don’t work for you please leave a comment and I’ll tend to them!

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I’m searching for the audio on the soon to be legendary interview with Eoghan Harris this evening on the Last Word on Today FM – but Anthony at Public Enquiry has the transcript. (Blogs might have helped a bit and talked about it and done the sums but as for the rest I think we’d be found very not guilty!)

Matt Cooper – How do you feel about this?
Harris - I feel sick, I’m going through the death thing, denial first and then anger. I think the public is going to go through the same series of shocks. There’s going to be a lot of grief about Bertie Ahern.

A few days ago when I spoke about him here there was an extraordinary amount of vitriolic texts and this has been par for the course across the media.

I don’t know whether put in by Fine Gael or a group of sour heads in Sinn Fein. There’s a virulent group of people out there helping this campaign, especially on the internet, the blogs reached an incredible level of abuse in the last ten to fifteen days, and I mean really bad stuff.

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This morning was a morning for Microblogging, texting and general wtf moments..

Jazz Biscuit is keeping us up to date with all the relevant internet funnies - go look at them, job ads and all!

I was up blogging at 3am this morning (thanks to my good friend – arthritis!) Britney comes to me again thanks to Red Mum and google video…

Hit me Baby one more time! The final wobble…

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Another Day, Another day of reckoning for Bertie in Dail Eireann. Everyone wants a piece of him. Gift Grub tells us more.

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I’m trying to get audio on the full interview given by John McGuinness on Newstalk’s Lunchtime Show this afternoon – but have a transcript of the important bits from a press release they’ve just issued. Will update the post later.

‘Minister McGuinness told Lunchtime with Eamon Keane on Newstalk 106-108fm that he didn’t think Bertie Ahern’s interview with RTE’s 6.01 News was beneficial:

“The case was presented. Maybe that’s part of the difficulty that we’re now experiencing because people are measuring what’s being said against that particular public appeal or public statement. I think they are taking that measurement, those that are interested, those that are still engaged with the Tribunal are perhaps looking at it, and measuring against that public statement. And that’s what’s causing concern and confusion for others, and sadness for more people, so there’s a whole mixture of emotions in there.�

Eamon Keane then asked Minister McGuinness if the RTE interview was a mistake:

“Given the amount of information that has emerged from the Tribunal since then, it was perhaps better if all of that had emerged, or been allowed to emerge without any intervention. It’s always a judgement call to as to whether you’ll do something at the beginning, the middle or the end of a contribution to a court case or a Tribunal, and sometimes you’re better to hold your peace and to say nothing, and maybe that might have been a better course to take in this instance. But what’s done is done and there’s nothing you can say about that.�

Minister McGuinness also outlined the damage the Tribunal evidence is having on the public as well as Fianna Fail:

“There is now doubt that it is having an effect on the party. No political party would like to see its leader pulled around like this, in these sorts of circumstances. There is no doubt about that. Publicly, I suppose people are concerned about the Tribunal and what’s happening there. And it’s up to the Taoiseach to convince them otherwise… It’s hard for me on a personal basis to see him in that difficulty or to see that evidence being given because of all the questions it brings up.�

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