Knowing what we already know about Bertie Ahern’s capacity as a witness, the powers that be should have distributed white flags at the doors of the banking inquiry before he arrived to give evidence.

God knows, it wasn’t long before we needed them.

After his opening statement and first few following questions, we were back in that Spartan hall in Dublin Castle: Mahon tribunal lifers again, losing the will to live while the then taoiseach talked his way around everything the lawyers threw at him.

Yesterday, in a different location, the Bert was back for a very short encore.

What sort of mad innocence overtook people who imagined that the lowly members of an Oireachtas committee would pierce a brass neck which stood up so well under weeks of intense questioning in the castle?

Bertie didn’t get where he might have been today (had he not, while a senior government minister, accumulated a stash of unexplained cash well above his public servant’s salary) by buckling in the face of a few backbench TDs and uppity Senators.

Ahern’s much-anticipated appearance stirred up huge interest. A lot of time has passed since the former taoiseach was King of the Hill in Leinster House.

A year or so after he resigned from office and not long after the bank bailout in 2008, he found himself in the company of Seán FitzPatrick, chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank, at a county council event in Leopardstown.

The country was in deep recession. Bertie mused that while he had been through many ups and downs in his time, in his experience the bad days never lasted much longer than 10 months.

He was wrong, on a number of counts.

Back then, he referred to FitzPatrick as “Seánie”, way before the like of Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty decided to adopt the same familiarity when referring to the disgraced banker at the inquiry.

In November 2008, Bertie and Seánie called the recession “the other side of the hill.”

And the Bert was quite happy to roll down it during his appearance.

Because after all, as he gently informed everyone in so many different ways, he played no small part in making this country great and aiding in the recovery.

This was a classic Ahern performance.

“I apologise for my mistakes but I also got a lot of things right” he declared early in his opening statement, meaning to start as he intended to go on.

Classic Ahern performance

Some younger observers said they saw a contrite, thoughtful and sincere, if amiably long-winded, witness. They could see why everyone liked Bertie. But the grizzled veterans of Flood and Mahon witnessed a classic Ahern performance.

As always, defined by his unique brand of militant humility, wrapped up in a self-deprecating vagueness and delivered with the smiling detachment of an ordinary Joe.

No wonder Joe Higgins was smiling to himself as those familiar slightly rueful, slightly hurt, explanations began to flow.

Young Pearse Doherty went for the headlines straight off. How come large parts of the opening statement were lifted from the witness’s autobiography?

Because he hasn’t changed his views since then, shrugged the Bert. Fair enough, he was giving a sort of contemporaneous account to the inquiry. (This also explains why Doherty had a copy of the book by his elbow in the canteen as he ate his lunch and chatted to an adviser.)

Then he moved on to the celebrated “boom is getting boomier” quote. Although Ahern actually said it was “getting more boomer”.

Anyway, what did he mean by this statement, wondered Doherty? Silly boy.

“Well, obviously we were going up in terms of the number of houses that we were producing rather than where we wanted to be stabilising, and the economy was still growing at 6 or 7 per cent, so it was not easing up, which is what we wanted to see happen, particularly on the property side, but I was happy on the other side, the other section of the economy was growing very strongly, even to the end and if you look at 2008, my last period, 28,000 jobs were created. . .” And so on.

Property bubble

You see, things happened that Bertie knew nothing about because nobody told him. He didn’t see the property bubble coming because he was more interested in “the supply side” of things and it was going great guns.

Various examples of him meeting developers were put to him. Galway races got a run out, naturally.

“I don’t believe that I personally had much interaction with property developers, I did deal considerably with the CIF. . .” he replied. Of course, others might believe differently.

As for the Galway tent? It was just “a bit of craic” - a nice social event. Why were people paying to get into it?

Because it rained a lot in Galway and they could stay dry, came the cheeky reply.

The Bert loved that tent. “Some people met their wives to be, and things like that, at it.”

He’s right there. Exiled developer Seán Dunne met his wife Gayle Killilea in that tent. How well the former taoiseach remembers it.

Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath understandably wondered if his involvement with the Mahon tribunal might have had an effect on how he carried out his job as taoiseach.

“I kinda ignored the tribunal – to my own detriment later – because I didn’t realise what the game was down there, but it didn’t affect my job.”

Sure he hardly gave it any time at all. But the media’s interest in it was a distraction, so he decided it was for the best to resign. It must have been tough for him, being the victim of this media intrusion.

He was good at his job. “I think I had a reputation – and it’s well known within officialdom, if not politically, that I used to read a huge amount of documentation.” But not where the tribunal was concerned.

A lot of experience in Europe

It wouldn’t be right to say that he was putting it about when Brian Cowen took over that he could do a better job of running the economy. But he had a lot of experience in Europe, that was all. Himself and Trichet go back a long way. Bertie might have been able to “put a bit of a lean on him”.

As for those boyos in Europe complaining that his budgets, when he was minister, were reckless, the Bert felt they were being “a bit hard” on the Irish. They didn’t do the same to the Germans.

A few years later, “and Germany were way over the line and I had the chancellor come down to say to me: “Keep your mouth shut, Bertie.” “C’mon, I said, don’t give me dat!”

Dat’s the spirit we need today. If only he were still here. . .

He talked them all into submission.

He apologised with one hand and defiantly claimed his detachment from any bad choices with the other.

No regrets about his policies in the policy sector. He just wanted ordinary people to get homes for themselves.

So how were so many people in vitally important positions so ignorant to what was happening in these banks?

“I think the answer to that, and needless to say I’ve had a few sleepless nights thinking about it in the last couple of years – the reason is, you just believed, maybe naively, but we couldn’t have done any better, but otherwise that the Central Bank and then the regulator and the Central Bank were on top of these issues.”

Not a bother on him. Because he always looks on the bright side – he also explained this in detail. Where’s that white flag when you need it. . .