Who Do You Think You Are? Episode 4 of 6, RTÉ One, Sunday, September 30th at 9.30pm
True blue Dubliner Bertie Ahern’s family history is firmly rooted in Cork where both of his parents were born and brought up. Bertie’s journey into his past sees him explore more about the lives of both his parents during the revolutionary years and brings him right to the heart of the divisions that were all too common during Ireland’s Civil War.
Bertie’s father Con spoke little of his revolutionary youth: this story brings to life his early days as IRA messenger boy, and his Civil War arrest and imprisonment in Cork City Gaol and, later, in Tintown Camp on The Curragh where he took part in a hunger strike that left a lasting impact.
Bertie returns to his family farm in East Cork where the Aherns progressed from being lowly tenants on English gentry land after the Famine, to become a new generation of Catholic landowners at the beginning of the 20th century – a story that ends in a tragedy.
On his maternal side, Bertie learns about the notorious K Company branch of the Auxiliaries who attacked his mother’s home in Cork during the War of Independence and sowed the seed for her lifelong resentment of “The Brits”.
Further digging into his maternal side reveals relatives who ran a Workhouse in West Cork for more than 50 years and saw their son killed in an ambush during the civil war while fighting for the new Free State Army under the nemesis of Fianna Fail, Blueshirt Eoin O’Duffy.