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BERTIE AHERN BELIEVES he could have been a contender in this year’s presidential election if Fianna Fáil’s popularity had not “gone south”.
In an interview with Dublin City University’s radio station, DCUfm, Ahern said the party’s popularity – or lack thereof – “snookered” any possible bid.
“Well I think if the party popularity didn’t go south, I mean I still would have done alright,” he said.
Asked by student broadcaster Barry Linehan if he has a chance of ever landing in the Phoenix Park, Ahern said:
I think it would have been [the perfect job for me] in the normal case of events. If there was no downturn and if it wasn’t [for] all the hassle of the tribunals and everything else, then you could have a good run at it.
He said the party had already crunched the numbers, placing his support at about 30 per cent and the party’s at just 20 per cent.
“If it was the other way around, if you were on 30 per cent and the party was on 40 per cent, you would hope the party would pull you in but there’s no hope that I could win,” added the former Fianna Fáil leader.
Backing Mitchell
The former Taoiseach said he believes Fine Gael’s candidate Gay Mitchell will top the polls.
“I’d say Mitchell definitely has it,” he told Linehan. ”He’s a good friend of mine, we get on well.”
However, Ahern added, “It’s going to be a packed field and nobody is going to win it outright…on the first count like Mary McAleese did.”
Commenting on McAleese’s nomination by Fianna Fáil in 1997, Ahern said he did not “shaft” Albert Reynolds, who was hoping to gain the party’s support.
I had no problem with Albert Reynolds running for the presidency but the harsh reality was that our poll figures were showing that he wouldn’t make it.
Drawing a parallel, Ahern said that he was not in this year’s race for the same reason.
“I would not get elected,” he told the student radio station in an interview due to be broadcast in late September.
The interview was carried out in last month as part of a student research project in which Linehan will interview the country’s living taoisigh.
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So what if it is, it’s a serious problem for the child that suffers it and can seriously destroy self esteem. No harm giving parents a source of info
The stigma attached to bed wetting as a child should be removed. Its very common and apart of growing up. Did it myself and not ashamed of it.
I remember wetting the bed at my friends house when I was about 8. I was so embarrassed but her mom was so kind,it was hidden well and my friend never found out so it was basically our little secret! She saved me major embarrassment in school. Parents were just after breaking up. Upset like that or many other traumatic experiences can cause bed wetting to kick in. I did it on and off until I was about 10 as I had a step family move in and then one of my step brothers got hit by a car and nearly died. As far as I am aware,I was the only one in my family who wet the bed. It’s very hard for a kid that age and it restricts them a lot. I wouldn’t stay at friends houses or anything,was so worried even into my teens that it might start again.
I feel sorry for little me now :P
I heard a story about an orphanage. To stop the children weting the bed they used to wake them up at 3am to go to the toilet and it didnt matter if they wanted to go or not.
Suppose that’s better than whipping them or making them do the walk of shame, my dad’s parents made him sleep outside under the caravan even in winter…
Bedwetters of all ages suffer more then their parents or pediatrician may know. Embarrassment often leads to silence. Children as young as five often live with feelings of fear of discovery, shame, low self-esteem, and feeling different.
Bedwetting is not anyone’s fault; our findings point to a deep sleep that prevents the brain from responding to the bladder’s signal. This is a compromised, unhealthy sleep that can also result in daytime symptoms; difficulty awakening, fatigue, memory difficulty, irritability, difficulty concentrating.
Parents naturally turn to their GP or pediatrician seeking information regarding their child’s bedwetting problem around five or six. Often the “Medical Advice” is to wait: Hearing “don’t worry, they will outgrow it”. Why is this the right advice? While the child waits, the enuresis can remain and additional symptoms can result. Sadly, there is No guaranteed that someone will outgrow bedwetting, in fact after the age of seven, it is less likely. One in fifty teenagers continue wetting the bed. Medical professionals rarely share that possibility.
The person feels different, burdened by shame and secrecy. An enuretic person (child, teenager or adult) does not see his/her bed as a place of rest; instead it is a place they will repeatedly fail.
Rewarding a child for a dry night only brings confusion and gives everyone the impression that the child has some control over the night wetting. Psychological counseling has not been proven to end bedwetting.
Dr. Lyle Danuloff, clinical psychologist and staff consultant for The Enuresis Treatment Center, states “The only way to end bedwetting successfully is to recognize that the bedwetting problem is a SYMPTOM resulting from a genetically determined and transferred deep sleep disorder. Until the underlying sleep disorder is addressed, a child, teenager or adult will continue to wet the bed. They will suffer from the psychological distress that the disorder can cause.
For more information, please visit our website http://www.nobedwetting.com
Regards,
Barbara Moore
I know what my son’s going through as I’ve been there, I was given a sheet by the public health nurse it said to get the child to change the bed sheets, my mother made me do that and I hated it, made me feel 1000 times worse. made me really embarrassed. My sons bed is made before he gets home from school. his brother teased him once and he got very upset, I had a word with him and his never mentioned it again, I also told my boy mommy did the same and that it’s ok, his body first wake up and he sleeps through it. But when his bigger his body will know and he will wake up or his body will hold it till morning.
Is this an article or an advertisement for bedwetting.ie?
Hi Paul.
The piece isn’t an advertisement – it’s intended to give parents information about bedwetting, its possible causes, and to let them know about a new resource that they might find helpful. Also, some of the information – eg GP opinions on bedwetting – is based on the results of a survey carried out by the website (so it’s only right they should be credited for that).
Hope that helps,
Jennifer
@PM are you taking the pi*s ?
I wet the bed, my dad wet the bed, my brother wet the bed and my 1 son wets the bed, his 5. I don’t make a big deal out of it it’s not a big deal I put a protector on the bed and don’t make any harsh coments if he does wet the bed, I tell him not to worry Mammy will have everything sorted and give him hugs n kisses. He can stay dry some nights and I say oh no wee wees today ruffle his hair and give him hugs and kisses.
My daughter started wetting the bed at 7 turned out she was diabetic. Since she has been on insulin she hasn’t wet the bed.
I used to let my little brother sleep in the top bunk when we were kids until he done this. Eeeewwww!
I was told bed wetting in adults can be a sign of childhood sexual abuse.
Is this true
WTF?
Am I the only one that doesn’t think bed wetting is that embarrassing? I can understand if it happens in school but in the comfort of your own home? I think the only thing that makes it overly awkward is the way people talk about it. It’s a phase, and if the child is embarrassed reassure them that’s it’s normal.
Bedwetting.ie is a website sponsored by drug company Ferring Pharmaceuticals. They manufacture a drug called Desmopressin which is used off-label to treat primary enuresis in children. I say off-label as the IMB have deemed the drug unsafe for treatment of this condition.
As a mother of 4 dealing with this issue I was interested to read this article and clicked through to the website which I noticed had a strong slant to medicating children which runs against most other current advice. I think the fact that the research was sponsored by a drug company should have been clearly stated in the article and not doing so is irresponsible journalism. Btw, I am not a medical professional and I found this information in a few minutes with google.
perhaps if the general … ‘society’ (if you could call it that, what with all the foreign influences from being ruled and administered in a commonwealth-language &c.) ‘society’….. could acknowledge that bed-wetters are ‘handicapped individuals’: that is, individuals with a severe disability.
X – X – X
And that they, as wetter-of-themselves (even when the visit their friends’ houses; and the smell and the piss everywhere &c.) deserve all the (otherwise granted) rights that are given to the other handicaps, the incapacitated disabled and otherwise senile idiot/lunatic members-of-society living in the shut-off “homes” (who also wet themselves) that (if we are to believe the bill of rights) are all “equal”.
Well: if they are all “equal” … then let the Tain leader come forward and admit that he too was a bed-wetter,
or that he was not one. Ever.
And let its mother come forward to testify thereto. After all, if the smell of piss is enough to have one estranged from its own (Irish) family & nation –as an adult–; then why not also for the Tain or the Taoish when they did precisely that as ‘mere infants’ (or indeed yet-to-be self-soilers, when théy inherit the full potential of théir long-since ‘badge-of-oldness’ agéd gréyness).
~):(~
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