Surrealing in the Years: How is Bertie Ahern still finding new ways to disappoint us?

REMEMBER A FEW months back, in the lead up to the passing of the Residential Tenancies Bill, which essentially allowed landlords to reset rents at market rates rather than the 2% they’d been beholden to before, as long as the property was vacant?

You remember! Around the time that activists, opposition politicians, experts, and the public at large all warned that this idea would inevitably lead to a spike in evictions, because how could it not, if landlords can now make more money by evicting people (while also charging higher rents going forward)?

And you remember too that the government listened to this logic, thought about it, and said “Whatever, man”, and did it anyway? Well, in entirely unrelated news, it was announced this week that evictions had increased by 51% year-on-year for the first three months of 2026.

You might think that in a country with a housing crisis as severe as Ireland’s that this would trigger some sort of reflection amongst our top decision-makers, but Taoiseach Micheál Martin this week confirmed that he’s feeling very comfortable about his status as leader of both his party and his country.

In the context of potential leadership challenges faced by his UK counterpart Keir Starmer, Martin was asked this week about whether his own leadership style had stagnated after 15 years as Fianna Fáil’s top man. Martin rebuffed the question and countered that his leadership style was always evolving, and that he was “not going to fight the next election now”.

“We formed the government 16 months ago”, Martin told broadcaster Gavan Reilly. “We said we would deal with housing, we said we would deal with infrastructure, we said we would deal with disability. We said we would deal with child poverty. Let’s get on and deal with it.” Is it just me, or does he sort of sound like he wishes his party hadn’t said those things?

What’s so great about his choice of words is that he doesn’t actually even imply anything good is going to happen. We’re not going to solve housing, we’re just going to deal with it. We’re not going to end child poverty, we’re going to deal with it. We’re going to increase evictions by 51%, and you’re going to deal with it.

And yet, when it comes to Fianna Fáil leaders, Martin did not have as ignoble a week as some. 

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern — who, to my knowledge, has never been cancelled for any previous offences and thus far has an unblemished reputation before the Irish public — was caught on camera making disparaging statements about African and Muslim immigrants to Ireland while campaigning for Fianna Fáil in the Dublin Central byelection. 

Ahern appears to have been recorded without his knowledge, and a recording of his statements made its way online.

“The ones I worry about are the Africans,” said Ahern, in what sort of feels like it’s flying under the radar in terms of being one of the worst things that such a significant Irish public figure has ever said. 

“We can’t be taking in people from ‘the Congo’ and all these places”, he continued. “I think there’s too many from those places”.

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First of all, there’s no country called ‘the Congo’. There’s the Democratic Republic of Congo, and another, different country called the Republic of Congo, but Ahern did helpfully add “and all these places”, so we know for certain that he was specifically communicating an aversion to immigrants from central Africa. Ahern did stress, however, that he has “no problem with Ukrainians”. Ahern has since appeared on The Indo Daily podcast to say that he rejects racism “in all its forms”. 

While Ahern’s comments don’t necessarily reflect attitudes within Fianna Fáil at large, they do represent the decline of decency in discourse around matters such as this. Yes, we’ve all been poisoned by the mainstreaming of these talking points over the last 10 years or so, but we should still be shocked, uncomfortable and disgusted that such an important person would pour such insult and indignity onto any community of people.

Ahern was then asked the incisive, well-formulated and definitely-not-nonsensical question, “And what about Sharia law and all that?”

Now, a sensible person, when faced with such a question, might say something like: “What are you talking about? Are you suggesting there is some likelihood of Sharia law being introduced in Ireland? Why would that be? How would that happen? Where did you hear something like that? What evidence could you possibly point to that makes you think that’s something you have to worry about?”

Anyway, the guy who was the head of our government for 11 years didn’t say any of those things; he actually took the unclear premise and added his own twist, saying that he is concerned about “the new generation” of Muslims, adding, without explanation, “that’s where the problem will lie”. 

Micheál Martin gently rebuked the erstwhile Fianna Fáil leader, calling the comments “not appropriate” and “not correct and proper”, which seems like a gross understatement, but what can you expect? As this column has noted extensively, the Taoiseach has only one approach when faced with legitimate criticism, and that is to go bitterly on the offensive.

When pushed for a response to the remarks in the Dáil by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, the (current) Taoiseach, for some reason, said: “You’re no angel yourself now when it comes to politics, and don’t pretend that you are”. What this euphemism could imply is unclear, and how it is in any way a response to Ahern’s highly racialised comments is even murkier. 

It is essential to understand that Ahern didn’t make these comments in a private capacity, but while canvassing for Fianna Fáil’s Dublin Central byelection candidate John Stephens, who is polling at 4%, behind Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan, Soc Dems’ Daniel Ennis, and Lanzarote’s Gerard Hutch.

While some prominent Fianna Fáilers have since tried to distance the party from Ahern’s remarks — Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has called them “totally wrong” — it does raise the question of whether anybody from the party asked Bertie Ahern about what kind of things he might be saying on the doorstep. You know, just a cursory, “Do you happen to have a certain distaste for people from a certain part of the world?” for example. Though, to be fair, if the Jim Gavin debacle taught us anything, it’s that Fianna Fáil’s vetting processes leave an awful lot to be desired.  

Ahern’s podcast appearance saw him attempt to walk back his remarks while standing over them at the same time. Unfortunately for Ahern, attempting such a feat is an easy way to trip yourself up.

“In particular, I should not have singled out any one nationality or group of people. That was wrong,” Ahern said, alongside claims that he stood on his head (his expression) to help Muslims in “the early years”. Well, first of all, bravo, but second of all, singling out one group of people wasn’t some byproduct of what Ahern was caught saying. The singling out was the point. He was specifically saying that he thinks we have too many migrants from central Africa. If he did not mean to single those people out, then what did he mean to say?

Ahern has also both defended his comments as unpolished and not intended for public consumption, while also arguing that the backlash against his comments signals a threat to free speech. So which is it? Did he speak in error, or did he simply speak too freely? These are two different things. That Ahern openly admits he’d have refined his remarks for a public forum is even more sinister. In another stop on this hastily arranged face-saving tour, Ahern claimed that he was trying to “calm [the conversation] down”. Simply put: his excuses are all over the shop.

If there is any humour to be found in this grim situation, it’s probably that somehow, in 2026, Bertie Ahern is still finding new ways to disappoint us. You’d think that, after this time, we would all be a bit warier of who Bertie thinks is the root of the problems in this country. Remind me again, whose decade of leadership left Ireland in such a precarious position as to be so gutted by the 2008 financial crisis that we never really recovered? Was it the Congolese, or am I remembering that wrong? Did evictions increase by 51% in the first three months of the year because of something the ‘new generation’ of Muslims has already done? Oh, they’re an efficient bunch, but that’s the ol’ Sharia Law for you. 

That Bertie Ahern is still invited to canvass for an election candidate is a testament to the seemingly inexhaustible tolerance of the Irish people. Unfortunately, it seems this great lesson in acceptance has not rubbed off on the man himself. 

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