He may have resigned back in 2008, but former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is back in the headlines after he was caught on camera while out knocking on doors for a by-election canvass in Dublin Central.
A woman at the doors got talking to Ahern, with his spokesperson telling the Examiner Tuesday that “Bertie wasn’t aware he was being recorded until the end of the conversation.”
The video captures the former Fianna Fáil leader – once dubbed “the most skilful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all” by Charlie Haughey – being called over to a doorstep in his former constituency by a woman who “wants to say hello.”
The woman goes on to raise concerns about globalism and “hordes of foreigners coming into our country.”
“Can we not close our borders?” she asks Mr Ahern, going on: “Can we not be like Poland, and have safe, clean streets?”
“All these people coming in. The Indians, who have a space programme, all these Muslims have 47 countries. All these Africans have a massive continent and massive natural resources,” she tells him.
“You think there’s too many of them?” asks a friendly-sounding Ahern.
When the woman says to Ahern that the people coming into the country “don’t give a shit about Ireland,” he responded: “No.”
“Our culture is gone,” the woman continues. The response Ahern – who rejoined his former party in 2023, more than a decade after parting ways – gives, is very interesting, even if it will have HQ groaning into their hands.
“I think there are too many coming in,” added Ahern. “I think we have to take some in. I have no problems with the Ukrainians. In fairness, Russia moved in, and [there is] war in their country. But a lot of the Ukrainians are going back now. We still have a lot of Poles here.”
“But the ones I worry about are the Africans,” Ahern admits. “I agree with you on the Africans. We can’t be taking people from the Congo and all these places. I think there’s too many from those places.”
The woman then asks about Muslims. “And what about Sharia law, and Muslims coming in?” to which Berite says: “The Muslims, I don’t worry about this generation of Muslims, but I worry about the next generation and the kids growing up. That’s when I think the problem will be,” he adds. “I said this to [Justice Minister] Jim O’Callaghan. “That’s where the problem comes, you know.”
“I’m worried about my kids,” the woman on the door continues. “Because they’re never going to be able to buy a house. And these rich Indians are coming in and they’re buying up all the property. They want our kids to live in sheds.”
“I’m worried about the Sharia thing,” she goes on. “Because they have a big problem with child brides and cousin marriage and FGM (female genital mutilation).”
“It’s crazy, crazy,” admits Ahern. “So that’s what you’ve brought in,” the woman fires back. “Why aren’t you speaking up for the Irish? You’ve had a great career […] you had your freedom of speech.”
Ending the exchange, the woman says she’s also concerned about gender ideology and free speech. “To bring them all in, our freedom has to go, because they have to bring in the hate speech laws.”
On transgenderism, the woman adds: “My spaces are gone.”
Ahern argues with none of it. In fact, he compliments the woman before leaving.
“You’re well educated,” Ahern chimes. “You should join a political party.”
As to be expected, Fianna Fáil swung into full damage control mode on Wednesday afternoon, with Taoiseach Micheál Martin slamming the comments in the undercover video as “not appropriate.:
“I think it’s not appropriate in my view, to be specific about the given ethnicity. And that’s not, in my view, correct or proper.
“We have to respect people with many different ethnicities in Ireland, many Irish citizens with different ethnic backgrounds, and that has to be respected.”
It’s clear that to Fianna Fáil, Ahern’s comments are deeply embarrassing. But the real problem for the party isn’t that what Bertie said is embarrassing – it’s that he is saying exactly what a great many people in this country are thinking – especially in relation to uncontrolled immigration and Irish identity.
Are we really going to pretend that Ahern is in the wrong when immigration has become one of most dominant issues in Irish politics, linked beyond doubt with a dire housing crisis and the subsequent simmering public unrest? Right across Europe measures are being taken, but here we’re still listening to politicians bleating about Tricolours being racist.
The political landscape has shifted entirely because the social contract has been broken. Educated young people are living in box rooms and childhood bedrooms, without anything to show for working long hours, unable to start an independent life – while the Government rolls out the red carpet in the form of asylum hotels and free services for asylum arrivals – with more than 33,000 now being catered for. We now class this as the new normal.
No-one cares about what Micheál Martin thinks is “proper”. Ahern, in the quite remarkable exchange, seems to agree that mass immigration is not benefitting Ireland, despite this being the line spouted by his own party in public over and over again. He even seems to agree that when people come from cultures very different from our own that can be a problem.
A slew of opinion polls have shown that Irish people are opposed to continued lax immigration policies. Yet, Fianna Fáil isn’t listening even though its own polling is abysmal and at record lows. Maybe they should bring Bertie back as an advisor.
People can slate Ahern for being against Muslims, as has been the caricature in the media today, but I think that’s unfair. People are concerned about the rise of radical Islam, and yet we never have these conversations.
Take the horrific murder and decapitation of two Irish men, Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee, in their homes in Sligo, by Yousef Palani in 2022. Of course, the media tried to make the case about homophobia, rather than the root cause, which was Palani’s extreme Islamist beliefs. The 23-year-old naturalized Irish citizen originally from Iraq, cited his religion as a justification, telling Gardaí that homosexuality was a “sin” and “prohibited under Islam,” claiming “you won’t find many homosexual Muslims”.
There is no doubt it’s on the rise, and people have a right to be concerned about the impact. Look to Britain, where Islamopopulist movements have rapidly taken root – with at least 100 Independent Muslim councillors elected, driven by issues like the Middle East.
Just last month, our new security watchdog warned that Islamic extremism – not legacy paramilitary violence – is now Ireland’s most pressing terror threat. But I suppose Ahern’s comments are the problem, and we’ll carry on pretending that the “far-right” is a bigger, much more insidious problem.
Ahern is likely aware that the root cause of extremism among Muslims, namely for our British neighbours, is alienation. Countries like France and England are facing what can only be described as an integration nightmare.
While France, for instance, a country which has become unrecognizable to many, has spent decades telling itself that the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants would become more French than their parents.
This has not turned out to be true. IFOP polling from last year blew this comforting tale to smithereens: it found 57 per cent of French Muslims aged 15 to 24 place the rules of Islam above the laws of the Republic – a rise of 10 per cent since 2021. Nearly half of those polled expressed sympathy for Islamist movements. It’s that sort of generational U-turn that Ahern seems to be well aware of. Yet I suppose in the eyes of Fianna Fail, the rest of us are far-right for pointing it out.
This is not about hating people, as the press would have us feel – but understanding that it also imports ways of life and cultures. Immigration, after all, doesn’t just import people – it imports cultures and ideologies. It’s not racist to notice that different cultures lead to different outcomes.
Whatever else you want to say about Bertie Ahern, in this instance, he likely mostly said what a great many people are thinking.