QuoteThat's not unusual, my local county councilor registered me to vote. Politicians do a lot of this type of work.Originally Posted by pete
If this person had an Irish mother why did he need assistance from Minister Ahern?
Bertie Ahern helped businessman get passport
RTE: Ahern helped businessman get passport
If this person had an Irish mother why did he need assistance from Minister Ahern?It has been confirmed tonight that Bertie Ahern assisted Manchester businessman Norman Turner in receiving a passport in 1994.
Mr Turner - who donated money to Fianna Fáil - was at the centre of a proposal to build a controversial casino in the Phoenix Park in the same year.
Tonight a spokesperson for Mr Ahern said the suggestion that the facilitation of this passport was inappropriate was 'totally mischevious' He pointed out that Norman Turner's mother was born in Cork and as such Mr Turner was entitled to a passport.
Late last year the Fianna Fáil fundraiser and close colleague of Bertie Ahern, Des Richardson, told the Mahon Tribunal that Mr Turner had given $10,000 in cash around April or May 1994 for Fianna Fáil.
How long can FF support him? I don't many people believe he is a crook but it is harder to believe his innocence.
That's not unusual, my local county councilor registered me to vote. Politicians do a lot of this type of work.If this person had an Irish mother why did he need assistance from Minister Ahern?
If it transpires that Mrs Turner is an Irish citizen will you withdraw your insults?If this person had an Irish mother why did he need assistance from Minister Ahern?
How long can FF support him? I don't many people believe he is a crook but it is harder to believe his innocence.
If my car was giving me trouble I'd ask a mechanic friend to help. What would you do if you wanted to get a passport you were entitled to, and a friend of yours was in the public service?
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
Obviously first of all, I'd donate 10,000 dollars to his political party, as is the rule in Ireland, then I'd go and get the passport I'm already entitled to.
The high-flying business type's equivalent of buying him a pint in the local later?
Clearly however one could insinuate that the businessman, by donating to a political party governing a country he neither had financial stakes in nor lived in the jurisdiction of, was trying to get an advantage in... er...
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
Got it in one Gavin
But seriously, it seems the donation itself is not disputed. Now your original point (which I so wittily altered) remains - why would a businessman donate to a political party governing a country he neither had financial stakes in nor lived in the jurisdiction of?
to be honest, 18 years later, I couldn't care less.
Do finance ministers have to sign off on planning permission these days? Bloody bureaucracy, eh?
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0130/ahernb.html
Tonight a spokesperson for Mr Ahern said the suggestion that the facilitation of this passport was inappropriate was 'totally mischevious'
He pointed out that Norman Turner's mother was born in Cork and as such Mr Turner was entitled to a passport.
And he said in 2007, 6,000 passport applications were processed in this way - through the intervention of Oireachtas members.
this is just Fine Gael being silly
I'm inclined to agree. Bertie is as bent as a hairpin but, in this instance, there's nothing to see here.
" I wish to God that someone would be able to block out the voices in my head for five minutes, the voices that scream, over and over again: "Why do they come to me to die?"
I'd ask him to pick up an application form for me on his way home from work.
Big difference between getting a passport and getting a car fixed.
To fix a car your entitled to have fixed, you bring it to a qualified mechanic.
To apply for a passport your already entitled to you dont have to give
10k to the Minister for Finance to lodge in his account. Ooops, sorry, sure
he didnt have a bank account.
Larry Be Wyse
www.acsportsimages.com
Well, people are focusing on the passport thing, but surely this is the main point:
It suits FF to focus on the passport, but surely Ahern doesn't help out every stranger he meets with their application. It still mightn't amount to a hill of beans, though.He said this was serious and significant new information that indicates that Mr Turner had a closer relationship with the Taoiseach than previously admitted.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Not much to whip Bertie with here I feel, shame, given how much of a lying, thieving scumbag he is
Id be less worried about passports and dodgy money being paid to him and more about why he is taking time off his job and charging 3 grand to open places like pubs and shops etc during the day.
You would never see george bush or Gordon Brown cuttign the ribbon on some off licence in the middle of no where.
All polititians are dodgy it doesnt take a tribunal and 350 mill to find that out.
Watching the new TV 3 show last night they had a FF guy on and the presenter asked him " do you believe that Berties Lawyer who had intimate knowledge of his account and who knew his had 73 grand in savings really organised a whip around to pay his 17grand legal bill from the seperation because he was hard up at the time" ?
Your man said yes
Who keeps electing these idiots ......oh ya bigger idiots
Bit hard to pick it up on the way from work in Manchester, but if Bertie is bringing it over, you'd think he'd put in a good word for him aswell at the same time given that...
And he said in 2007, 6,000 passport applications were processed in this way - through the intervention of Oireachtas members.the donation was specifically to FIne Fail, which would be the obvious option to thank someone like Bertie without implicating him in anything.To apply for a passport your already entitled to you dont have to give
10k to the Minister for Finance to lodge in his account. Ooops, sorry, sure
he didnt have a bank account.
The smearing is getting pathetic at this point. Let the tribunal take its course, should a bombshell be dropped, wait for the tribunal to make its recommendation and then say farewell to Bertie. If the tribunal do not find that there was dodgy dealings between himself and Owen O'Callaghan, shut the hell up and get on with doing some damn work to run our country instead of wasting petty point scoring which didnt work before the election and wont work for the next one.
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
And if the tribunal pass something along the lines of the Michael Jackson 'not innocent, but can't be proven guilty' verdict what then? Can we never use the no bank account, different versions of events, overall El Tel style dealings against Bertie again?
The donation was allegedly specifically to Fianna Fáil (I say allegedly because Turner refuses to co-operate with the Tribunal and so we don;t know his intention), but it never made it to the Fianna Fáil account. Richardson pocketed the $10,000 cash in Manchester, and bought 'corporate gifts' with it for FF fundraisers - or so he has told the Tribunal.
As noby points out, the significant fact here is that Ahern was obviously closer to Turner than he has represented. Funny, O'Connor is his friend but they didn't go to matches together, whereas he went to (at least 2) matches with Turner but he wasn't his friend.
Does anybody still believe the digout story, seriously? Apart from dyed-in-the-wool FFers, that is.
Last edited by monutdfc; 31/01/2008 at 12:11 PM. Reason: edited for what happened the $10k from Turner that Richardson picked up in Manchester
The thing is, I think he probably does. He has a good few staff and volunteers in his constituency office who probably spend their whole day doing this sort of stuff.
I doubt this particular application was handled by those people htough. The main point coming from this though really isn't Bertie giving out this passport, it's that this incident has shown that Bertie was possibly/probably lying to the tribunal about his connections to Turner
Why? What about the "connections"? And why would he bother, considering that that particular relationship isn't the subject of the tribunal?
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
Why in relation to the office staff? Because if I had donated 10k I would want someone other than a Young FFer pushing thorugh my passport application
Bertie has said that he isn't a friend of Turner's, but the evidence of free Old Trafford tickets, donations, and express passports might point to that being a porky.
He was asked about Turner in the Tribunal, hence if he had lied about said connection to the Tribunal he could be in a spot of bother, not to mention the damage it will further do to his former 'honest man' reputation
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