Bertie Ahern resigns as Taoiseach

posted by Mark posted on 2nd April, 2008 at 02:36 pm

Only the Irish readers will care about this one, but if you haven’t heard already, Bertie Ahern announced today that he’ll be handing in his resignation as Taoiseach on 6th May. It’s a pretty interesting case really. Bertie’s been Taoiseach for nearly 11 years, and was liked by the public for seeming like a pretty down-to-earth kinda guy. He should be remembered for his work on the Peace Process with Northern Ireland and the “Celtic Tiger” economy that grew under his leadership. Lately there has been a tribunal though into some of his finances during his time in office, with some suspicious large sums of money under question.

With this tribunal going on I don’t think too many people would have been surprised to hear of his resignation.

Personally I liked Bertie Ahern. I’m not too into politics but he seemed decent enough, and I once met him him a local shopping centre when I was way younger (I’d say nine or ten years of age) and he was very polite, even to me, a young child at the time, despite the fact that he was surrounded by a ton of people trying to talk to him. I asked him “What’s it like being known everywhere you go?” I basically just wanted to ask him something for the sake of talking to the Taoiseach. He answered that it had some advantages and disadvantages, but then some middle-aged bitch interrupted with “I’m a teacher and I’m very upset” and I decided it was time to leave the man alone, I’d gotten my wee chat with him, I was happy.

Whether he took brown envelopes or not, I liked him, and he seemed to be doing a decent enough job. What’s so bad about brown envelopes anyway?