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05 Sept 2025
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05 Sept 2025
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Former Irish premier Bertie Ahern has remained coy on the prospect of running for the Irish presidency in 2025.
Almost a month after it was revealed that he rejoined the Fianna Fail party, 10 years after leaving, he urged reporters to avoid “all kinds of speculation” on whether he would make a bid for the Aras.
Speculation has circulated on what role the former Fianna Fail leader would take in the party after he was readmitted as an ordinary member, paying an annual fee of 20 euro.
Senior Fianna Fail figures have emphasised that he would not take on any senior party role, with Tanaiste and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin saying that his membership is welcome in the context of his “outstanding” contribution to peace on the island, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Mr Ahern himself has said that he has “no intention of going back to my old job,” and suggested that the 2025 presidential election is too far away to clarify whether he intends to run.
After an address to a gathering of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly at Stormont on Monday, Mr Ahern told reporters that there was “lots of speculation about a lot of things”.
“I keep away from that,” he said of the Aras bid rumours.
“All I did was join my local (Fianna Fail) Cumman branch in Drumcondra and that led to all kinds of speculation, so don’t listen to that too much.”
When asked whether he had no interest in running for the presidency, he replied: “I didn’t say that.”
When asked did this mean he was interested in the role, he said: “I didn’t say that either.”
Mr Ahern left Fianna Fail in 2012, as efforts began within the party to expel him following a tribunal’s findings.
The Mahon Tribunal, which looked at allegations of planning corruption, did not find Mr Ahern to be corrupt but it said he did not “truthfully account” for money he lodged into his bank account.
With Fianna Fail stuck in the mid-teens to high-20s in opinion polls, speculation abounds about the consequences of the former taoiseach’s return to his party.
As leader of Fianna Fail, the Dublin politician won three back-to-back elections for the party, and served as taoiseach from 1997-2008.
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