Fionnán Sheahan

The Good Friday Agreement, as you started out pointing, Fianna Fáil, their raison d'etre was the reunification of Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement was in effect...

Yeah, potentially a stepping stone to that, potentially an abandonment of that because it basically says we no longer have a right to take back.

Not without the consent.

Without the consent of the majority of the people.

So where does Bertie Hearns stand given that, again, he had that shadow hanging over him about his personal finance?

Well, he was a protege of Charles Haughey, learned quite a lot from him, both good and bad, and is very interesting about him.

And I hope in fullness of time, he'll talk very frankly about Charlie, about his downside as much as but.

Again, Ahern, the ultimate pragmatist, an extraordinary hard worker.

He was a nine nights a week man.

He was crazy.

You know, I mean, his personal life, family life took a very heavy toll.

The level of work that he did certainly moved into a post-nationalist framework, which is interesting unto itself because his father died.

was a pretty rabid anti-treaty Republican and was among the last to be released from detention, from internment in 1924.

Pragmatism, absolute determination, determined hard work, an extraordinary character.

Yeah, he got himself into some financial strife.

Which he argued was all to do with his marital breakup and wasn't about corruption or anything.

Yeah, I felt sometimes in politics you can't deploy your best arguments because I think he'd have been done for contempt of court, quite simply because of his divorce proceedings.

So he was involved in a very aggravated and acrimonious split.

and the financial consequences of that.