Bertie Ahern says he’ll keep busy with other things for the next two years until it’s time to declare if he’s running for the Presidency.
The former Fianna Fail Leader has consistently refused to rule himself out of a tilt at the Aras When Michael D Higgins’ second term ends in 2025.
But it’s controversial after the Mahon Tribunal found in 2012 that he had not been truthful about in his evidence about large sums of money he’d received.
He’s been speaking to Sue Nunn ahead of an appearance at the ALG conference in Kilkenny on Thursday.
And he says that because his position as a former Taoiseach means he’s on the President’s Council of State he wouldn’t declare an interest in the office himself at this stage: ”It’d be very inappropriate for me to say anything. The President still has two and a half years to go and the convention here since the foundation of the state is that the Presidency only comes up within the last six months so it doesn’t really arise.”
”So I don’t have to turn my mind to it til then, but between now and then I’ll keep busy with other things,” he said on The Way It Is.
