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February 5, 2004updated 17 May 2007 11:30am

Columnist in and out of Ahern camp

By Press Gazette

Irish columnist and broadcaster David McWilliams has revealed that in the Nineties, when he was scriptwriting for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, then the Republic’s finance minister, he wrote articles criticising him.

The articles, he said in an interview with Hot Press magazine, were published in Business and Finance magazine under his assumed name Jack Rosen.

McWilliams was at the time working in the Irish Central Bank and spent three years scriptwriting for Ahern. He acknowledged it was at this time he was writing a series of articles for Business and Finance.

He told Hot Press: “So I was writing speeches for Bertie on Wednesday and criticising him in print on Friday.” McWilliams is currently presenting a programme on the Dublin station NewsTalk 106 and is host of a TV3 economic affairs programme.

By Des Cryan in Ireland

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