Mr Bertie Ahern TD
Leinster House
Dublin 2

2nd April 2008

Dear Taoiseach,

I came in from church to hear that you had resigned.

If these are the dying days of Bertie, why not go out on the high ground?

I was thinking about the name of your party, “Fianna Fail – the Republican Party”. Why not decide that your final weeks will live up to the party name?

Soldiers of Destiny – We laugh now about Dev’s speech on Patrick’s Day in 1943, “comely maidens dancing at the crossroads”. (I know he didn’t say that, I have read the speech, but that is how it is remembered). At least Dev tried painting a big picture, he tried expressing a vision of something. There is a line in the Bible that says a people without vision perish, isn’t that our problem? What vision is there left that’s not about having money to buy things? What about clambering up from the streets and looking around to see where we might go? Sure, people might laugh, but at least in sixty years time there would be something in the books for people to read about. Let’s have some vision of destiny.

The Republican Party – “res publica”, a public thing. Being a true republican means open government, it means being transparent. Jesus talked about people having integrity, “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes'”, he told his followers, “and your ‘no’ be ‘no'”. It was really disappointing that you went to the High Court to defend your right to say one thing in the Dail and one thing to the tribunal, a true republican, an open, public politician, would not have had to do such a thing. Being republican should mean no private deals, no agreements behind closed doors, no special interest groups. What about some real republicanism? What about laying the foundations for open and public government instead of one relying on strings of local promises and alliances cobbled together with politicians who are far from anything you believe?

Fianna Fail – the Republican Party. Why not frighten those you leave behind and decide that this is what you are really about? If you are going down, then go down in your true colours and be remembered as someone who at the end went down with principle?

I’m a Sassenach, so it doesn’t really matter what I think anyway, but it was just a thought.

Yours etc.