Bertie Ahern wishes 'somebody told me what was going on in the banks'

'No one told me about the banks – I was only the Taoiseach'

BERTIE AHERN, the former Fianna Fáil leader and Finance Minister once described by late Taoiseach Charles Haughey as "the best, the most skilful, the most devious and the most cunning of them all", walked away from the Dáil on Thursday after 34 years with the self-serving plea that he wishes "somebody somewhere told me what was going on in the banks"!

Bertie Ahern is standing down as a TD for Dublin Central. His Fianna Fáil running mate, Cyprian Brady, who polled just 939 votes in 2007 but was dragged over the line by Ahern's huge surplus, is facing the voters again. Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald is challenging for a seat in Dublin Central.

Ahern told reporters at the last session of the 30th Dáil:

I suppose I have lots of regrets about different things. I would have loved if somebody somewhere told me what was going on in the banks in this country but nobody ever did. We get wise after the event.

It seems the biggest regret of the avid Manchester United fan isn't the financial crisis that his administrations have plunged hundreds of thousands of families into but his failure to have completed his pet project of a National Stadium for soccer, 'The Bertie Bowl':

I still think we didn’t get a proper, national infrastructural stadium, and I think unfortunately when I see little countries like Qatar and Kuwait talking about their 10 stadiums and we never succeeded in getting one national stadium. That’s an achievement I tried hard to do but I didn’t get.

He didn't even acknowledge that policies pursued by him or his governments might have played any part in the economic crisis as he walked off with ministerial and TD pensions worth more than €150,000 a year for the rest of life and a once-off lump sum of around €160,000 based on his years of service in the Dáil.

Bye-bye, Bertie.