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Tag Archives: London School of Economics


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Birth of Bertie Ahern, 11th Taoiseach of Ireland

Bartholemew Patrick “Bertie” Ahern, former Fianna Fáil politician who serves as Taoiseach from 1997 to 2008, is born in Drumcondra, Dublin, on September 12, 1951. He also serves as Leader of Fianna Fáil (1994-2008), Leader of the Opposition (1994-97), Tánaiste and Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht (Nov.1994-Dec.1994), Deputy Leader of Fianna Fáil (1992-94), Minister for Industry and Commerce (Jan. 1993), Minister for Finance (1991-94), Minister for Labour (1987-1991), Government Chief Whip and Minister of State at the Department of Defence (Mar. 1982-Dec. 1982), Lord Mayor of Dublin (1986-1987) and as a Teachta Dála (TD) (1977-2011).

Ahern is educated at St. Patrick’s National School, Drumcondra and at St. Aidan’s Christian Brothers, Whitehall. He receives his third level education at the College of Commerce, Rathmines, part of the Dublin Institute of Technology. He claims or it has been claimed by others in circulated biographies that he was educated at University College Dublin (UCD), and the London School of Economics, but neither university has any records that show Ahern was ever one of their students. He subsequently works in the Accounts Department of Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin.

By 1972, Ahern has met his future wife, Miriam Kelly, a bank official who lives near the Aherns’ family home. They marry in St. Columba’s Church, Iona Road in 1975. They have two daughters from the marriage, Georgina and Cecelia. Georgina is the wife of Westlife member Nicky Byrne. Cecelia is a best-selling author. The Aherns separate in 1992.

Ahern is elected to the Dáil, the lower house of the Oireachtas, in 1977 as a member of the Fianna Fáil party for the newly created Dublin Finglas constituency. He is elected to the Dublin City Council in 1979, later becoming Lord Mayor of Dublin (1986–87). An assistant whip (1980–81) in the first government of Taoiseach Charles Haughey, he becomes a junior minister in Haughey’s second government (1982) and Minister for Labour in his third (1987–89) and fourth (1989–91) governments.

Ahern’s success in establishing general economic agreements with employers, unions, and farmers in 1987 and 1990 and his role in constructing the first Fianna Fáil coalition government (with the Progressive Democrats) in 1989 confirms his reputation as a skillful negotiator. He is made Minister for Finance in 1991. In the contest to choose Haughey’s successor, Ahern withdraws in favour of Albert Reynolds, and he remains Minister for Finance in each of Reynolds’s two governments (February–November 1992 and 1993–94). In November 1994, following the fall of the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party government, Reynolds resigns, and Ahern is elected party leader. He is set to become Taoiseach in a new coalition with the Labour Party, but at the eleventh hour Labour opts to join a government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left.

Ahern forms a Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats minority government following elections in 1997. Credited with overseeing a thriving economy, he is reelected Taoiseach in 2002. He plays a major role in securing peace in Northern Ireland, participating in the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and helping negotiate the return of devolution to Northern Ireland in 2007. On May 15, 2007, he becomes the first Taoiseach to address a joint session of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Soon afterward Ahern wins a third term as Taoiseach. He is reelected despite implications of his involvement in an influence-peddling scandal. The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters & Payments, ultimately better known as the Mahon Tribunal, which is investigating alleged illegal payments by developers to politicians to influence zoning decisions in and around Dublin during the early 1990s, subsequently questions Ahern about his personal finances during his tenure as Minister for Finance. In early April 2008, as the investigation of Ahern’s involvement mounts, he announces that he will step down as Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fáil in May. He is succeeded in both posts by Brian Cowen. In the Mahon Tribunal’s final report, issued on March 22, 2012, it indicates that it does not believe Ahern had told the truth when questioned by the commission about alleged financial improprieties, though it does not directly accuse him of corruption. Ahern, threatened with expulsion from Fianna Fáil in the wake of the report, resigns from the party later in March while still maintaining that he had testified truthfully to the tribunal.

Ahern says in April 2018 that he is considering running for President of Ireland in 2025 as an independent candidate. That same month he walks out of an interview with DW News after being questioned on the findings of the Mahon Tribunal.

In October 2018, Ahern is appointed to chair the Bougainville Referendum Commission, which is responsible for preparing an independence referendum in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which takes place in December 2019.


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Birth of Raymond Crotty, Economist, Writer, Academic & Farmer

Raymond Dominick Crotty, economist, writer, academic and farmer who is known for his opposition to Ireland’s membership of the European Union, is born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny on January 22, 1925.

Crotty grows up in Kilkenny and, while a student at St. Kieran’s College, Kilkenny, he begins breeding pigs in his spare time. Rather than move on to university, he pursues his interest in agriculture by going to work for a farmer relative in 1942. A year later he undertakes a 12-month course at the Albert Agricultural College in Glasnevin, Dublin. In 1945, he purchases a 204-acre farm in Dunbell, not far from Kilkenny, and spends the next two decades putting into practice his developing knowledge of agricultural production.

In 1956, while still a farmer, Crotty enrolls as a distance-learning student at the University of London, obtaining a BSc (Econ.) degree in 1959. He spends two further years studying for a MSc (Econ.) degree at the London School of Economics. In 1961, he obtains a post as lecturer in Agricultural Economics at University of Wales, Aberystwyth. During the 1960s, he sells his farm and becomes an economic adviser to various development agencies, including the World Bank. His work brings him to various parts of the developing world, including Latin America, India, and Africa. In 1976, he receives a fellowship at the University of Sussex. In 1982, he becomes a lecturer in statistics at Trinity College, Dublin.

Crotty’s knowledge and experience of agricultural economics shapes his attitude to Ireland’s participation in the European Economic Community. His years as a farmer teaches him that Irish agriculture is structured so as to discourage efficient use of the land.

Crotty grows to believe that agricultural efficiency can best be achieved by the imposition of an annual land tax. This would allow taxes on inputs and outputs to be removed or reduced and would encourage only those prepared to maximise the potential of their land to remain in farming. In putting forward this proposal, he is reflecting the influence of American economist Henry George, who held that land owned by private individuals should be subject to a tax on the land because of the advantage bestowed on the owner. He believes that Irish agriculture would be damaged if Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) as, instead of becoming more efficient, farmers would grow to depend on external subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Furthermore, Crotty maintains that Ireland’s status as an ex-colony makes it unsuited for membership of a bloc of nations that include former colonial powers. In 1962, in the early stages of the public debate on whether Ireland should join the EEC, he expresses his concerns about the possible loss of Ireland’s national identity within what he termed a “European super state.”

In 1972, Crotty joins Trinity College academic Anthony Coughlan in opposing Ireland’s accession to the EEC. Over the next twenty years he campaigns against further integration of Ireland into the EEC, most notably during the attempts to ratify the Single European Act in the mid-1980s. He stands for election in the 1989 European Parliament election as a candidate in the Dublin constituency. He receives 25,525 votes (5.69% of the valid votes cast), not enough to elect him. In 1992, he once again allies himself with Coughlan in urging Irish voters to reject the Maastricht Treaty in the referendum held on June 18.

Despite failing to win majority support for his views in elections and referendums, Crotty continues until the end of his life his campaign against Ireland’s membership of the European Union.

Crotty is a prolific writer, producing books, pamphlets, articles, and letters on subjects such as economics, history, and Ireland’s involvement with Europe. His final work, When Histories Collide: The Development and Impact of Individualistic Capitalism, is edited by his son Raymond and published posthumously in 2001. It is an economic history of mankind from the earliest stages of human development to the present day. Reviewing it on behalf of the American Sociological Association, Professor Michael Mann of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) describes it as “an extraordinary book by an extraordinary man” and “a must-read.”

Raymond Crotty dies at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, at the age of 68, on January 1, 1994 and is buried in Tulla Cemetery outside Kilkenny.