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30th Sep 2018

Bertie Ahern to discuss his grandfather’s suicide on Who Do You Think You Are?

Carl Kinsella

Bertie Ahern

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern speaks publicly for the first time about his grandfather’s suicide in his episode of RTÉ One’s Who Do You Think You Are? tonight.

Ahern’s grandfather Maurice Ahern died in 1933 from a self-inflicted gun wound to the chest. In tonight’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? airing at 9.30pm on RTÉ One, the Drumcondra native travels to the family farm in Cork.

The documentary reveals that Bertie’s father Con Ahern decided not to take on the family farm, choosing to go to Dublin instead. This went against his father Maurice’s wishes but Con would not change his mind and the farm went to his younger brother instead.

It is while at the farm that the former Fianna Fáil leader opens up about his grandfather’s death having been given a news report on the inquest into the suicide. The coroner found that Maurice Ahern died on September 3rd, 1933, “due to shock and haemorrhage due to gunshot wounds to the chest, self-inflicted”.

Ahern further revealed that his own father never returned to the family farmer after Maurice’s suicide.

Who Do You Think You Are? will air on RTÉ tonight at 9.30pm. The episode will also see Ahern go through his genealogy and lineage.

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