Irish prime minister Ahern resigning amid finance probe

Veteran leader a key negotiator of '98 peace deal

"I have never done anything to dishonor any office I have held," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told the media yesterday. (Niall Carson/associated press)

DUBLIN - Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister who alternately wheedled and prodded Northern Ireland into a historic peace agreement, announced yesterday that he was resigning amid a long-running investigation of his financial ties to business people.

Flanked by his ministers, the 56-year-old politician said in an emotional statement that he will step down May 6. The date comes shortly after a planned address to a joint session of the US Congress, and after the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, which helped end decades of conflict in Northern Ireland.

"I want everyone to understand one truth above all else. Never, in all the time I have served in public life, have I put personal interest ahead of the public good," said Ahern, who is one of Europe's longest-serving prime ministers. "I have never received a corrupt payment, and I have never done anything to dishonor any office I have held."

Ahern was elected to a record third term last year at the head of a smoothly functioning coalition government. He has presided over an economic boom that helped transform Ireland from an impoverished rural economy to a major exporter in Europe.

The prime minister had indicated he probably would step down before the end of his mandate, which could have been as far off as 2012, but the drumbeat of inquiry into payments he received in the 1990s has grown feverish in recent weeks.

Political analysts said Ahern and his allies feared that the probe could affect the outcome of Ireland's upcoming referendum vote on a new European Union treaty, and possibly influence local council and European Parliament elections next year.

"There is a growing fear, looking at the political mood, that people would take advantage of the referendum to register a vote against the government, and that would be a very big embarrassment, and very serious," said Timothy Patrick Coogan, an Irish historian and former newspaper editor. "The country's done very well with the EU; it would be the reversal of the engine of a speeding car."

Ahern has long been dubbed the "Teflon Taoiseach," a reference to the Gaelic term for prime minister and his ability to avoid the scandals that plagued some of his predecessors. However, his finances dating from before he took the top office in 1997 have come to dominate Irish politics over the past 18 months.

He was nearly unseated in 2006, when a leak from the investigatory tribunal indicated he had accepted thousands of pounds from wealthy business people in 1993 and 1994, when he was minister of finance.

Yet Ahern survived in power, largely because of a tearful interview he gave on national television, during which he said he needed the money to cover costs after his legal separation from his wife.