“The rumours about Deirdre and myself are completely nuts,” the taoiseach told a reporter last week, in answer to claims that he and Deirdre Heney, a Fianna Fail councillor, are an item.
The speculation may be wrong, but hardly “completely nuts”. Heney is single, and Ahern apparently recently split with Celia Larkin, an image consultant he had been seeing for more than 10 years.
Eye-catching comments about his private life are becoming a feature of Bertie’s summers. Last July he told a newspaper: “I’m still with Celia. At least that’s who I was in bed with last night.” Ahern always claims to be reluctant to discuss his private life, and yet invariably provides just enough grist to feed the tabloid mill.
Heney was initally indignant too. “There’s nothing to it,” the councillor told a reporter. “Anyone saying that about me would not have my best interests at heart. It’s untrue.”
Some of Heney’s supporters were apoplectic, believing internal Fianna Fail rivals were circulating the malicious gossip in order to damage her. But by week’s end they had calmed down, considering that perhaps there is no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to politics.
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Heney became almost philosophical. “I suppose that when you stand for public office, people get the opportunity to vote for you or not and to talk about you or not,” she said. “I’m not sure who should be more flattered by (the rumours), me or the taoiseach.” Perhaps the taoiseach, who is 14 years her senior.
The rumours spring from old- fashioned jealousy. Heney, 38, a striking and photogenic blonde, is making her way in the male middle-aged bear pit that is north Dublin Fianna Fail. She is personal assistant to Noel Ahern, the taoiseach’s brother, a junior minister and northside TD. Ahern’s role as her political mentor fuels the backbiting.
The innuendo has been swirling ever since Heney made her successful political debut in the 1999 local elections. But it reached a climax after Ahern’s split from Larkin. Coincidentally the taoiseach was photographed alongside Heney at recent functions, but she was attending them in her new role as Dublin’s deputy lord mayor.
Their paths crossed again last week. The taoiseach was at the Galway Races, whence issued the “completely nuts” denial. Heney took a few days off from her secretarial job to attend the races for the first time in her life. And she made no attempt to blend into the background, reportedly “looking stunning in a white trouser suit” in the Fianna Fail tent.
Out of the spotlight, Heney’s political career hangs by a thread. She has failed to get onto the Fianna Fail ticket in the Clontarf area, beaten into last place at a party convention. Now she must rely on party bigwigs to add her name to the ticket. Even if they do, Heney will have to unseat another party councillor in the election next summer if she’s to return to City Hall.
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Those elections go the heart of last week’s headlines. Heney’s camp believe the rumours about a romance with the taoiseach were deliberately spread by party rivals to make it excruciatingly embarrassing for Fianna Fail HQ to add her name to the Clontarf ticket. “Now I think it’s all backfiring,” said a close friend of the councillor. “Look at all the publicity she’s getting.”
Like Margaret Thatcher, Heney is a grocer’s daughter. Her family lived over a shop in Phibsboro when she was young. She is the youngest of 10 children, two of whom died.
The Heney family are quintessential north Dublin Fianna Fail stock, a tight-knit group whose social life revolves around pubs such as Fagan’s in Drumcondra and attendance at local GAA matches.
One party member recalled: “Her father always came over to say hello to Bertie in the pub, although I suspect he and his wife were Charlie Haughey supporters. Deirdre and Bertie now drink in the same pub too, but I have never seen them talking. All Bertie wants to talk about in the pub is football.”
Were he to strike up a conversation with Heney, the taoiseach would find just as avid a football fan, however. “She has an unusual passion for Gaelic football and hurling and goes to great lengths to get tickets,” said a friend.
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Heney travelled to last summer’s World Cup and, even after her humiliating defeat at the Clontarf convention, she was seen in the bar afterwards giving a passionate defence of Roy Keane. Her business cards last year had the dates and times of Ireland’s and England’s World Cup matches printed on the back.
Her early education was as Gaeilge at Gaelscoil Chaitriona in Glasnevin, and her first job was at Aer Lingus. She later got a post in the stock control unit at Aer Rianta, the airports authority. But politics had always been in her background — she spent formative years distributing leaflets and making tea and sandwiches for Fianna Fail campaigners. She got a job as a parliamentary secretary to Ger Brady, and after he lost his seat she linked up with Noel Ahern, when he was elected in 1992.
Six years later Heney bought a house in Killester, enrolled for a public relations diploma at the Fitzwilliam Institute and set about getting a Fianna Fail nomination for the Ballymun-Whitehall district in the 1999 local elections.
She approached a leading member of Bertie Ahern’s election team for advice on how to win a council seat. “Her campaign was superb,” he said. “She was always impeccably turned out, produced first-class election literature, and was very good at picking up the issues on the doorsteps.”
Heney polled 1,018 votes, behind her mentor Noel Ahern but comfortably ahead of everybody else in the three-seater. Three years later her name was added to the Fianna Fail slate in Dublin North Central. The party did once win three seats in that constituency, but that was 1989, and one Charles J Haughey led their ticket. Expecting to do it again in 2002 was a tall order.
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The sitting Fianna Fail TDs reacted in exactly opposite ways to her arrival. Sean Haughey cried foul, complained bitterly when the taoiseach went out canvassing with Heney and claimed that Bertie Ahern wanted to eliminate the Haughey name from the Dail. Actually the taoiseach was committed to canvassing with every first-time Fianna Fail candidate and Heney was not being singled out, whatever the tongue-waggers said.
Ivor Callely did the opposite, agreeing to reduce his tower of first preferences in Heney’s favour as part of a delicate strategy of vote management. His prize for this unselfish behaviour was to become a junior minister.
It almost worked. Callely’s first preferences dipped from over 11,000 to 6,896, allowing Heney to amass a total of 5,533, while Haughey’s star turn as victim ensured he topped the poll. In the subsequent battle for transfers Heney lost out to Finian McGrath, an independent, by about 300 votes.
That might have been her best chance of a seat in the Dail. “That vote management won’t happen again,” Callely’s associate said.
Heney is staying in North Central, and her problem is that Ballymun-Whitehall is outside the Dail constituency. Hence the move to Clontarf, where she performed well at the general election. But at a convention to pick the Clontarf ticket she got just seven votes out of about 50. Afterwards Callely publicly suggested that she go back to Ballymun and not ask to be added to the Clontarf ticket by HQ.
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“I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the party that she’s added on,” agreed Rory Scanlan, a local Fianna Fail secretary. “We’ll lose a seat in Clontarf if she goes in, and we’ll lose her seat in Ballymun as well.”
But Heney’s camp are staying put, and believe she will thrive without the help of the local party organisation. “Do you know how many of the 450 members of Fianna Fail in Dublin North Central supported her campaign?” one indignant friend demanded. “One. It was family and friends that did all the work. And still she nearly pulled it off. That’s why they’re so scared of her.”
Most of Heney’s public pronouncements have been pretty vapid, including urging the taoiseach not to allow the US “war machine” to use Shannon airport without a second United Nations mandate.
So no policies worth talking about. But with ambition, looks, connections and lots of media attention on her side, Heney would appear to have everything else she needs for a long and successful political career.