DICK WALSH The death of Dick Walsh on March 11th at the age of 65 silenced a voice in journalism which would tremble with Swiftian savage indignation when it targeted the follies, corruption and hypocrisy of modern Irish life and especially politics.
The tributes paid to him in the Dáil this week would have elicited sardonic comment, probably unprintable, were he in his onetime place in the Press Gallery to hear them. But there was general agreement that until his retirement from The Irish Times last October, he was an outstanding political reporter and commentator over some of the most turbulent years in Irish politics.
The fact that his best writing was done in spite of a crippling spinal disease which necessitated frequent trips to hospital and the constant presence of an oxygen container made his achievement all the more remarkable. Yet those who met him and discussed the contemporary scene never heard any complaints about his debilitating illness.
Richard Colman Walsh, as he was christened, was born in Cratloe, Co Clare, on October 29th, 1937, the eldest of a family of two sons and two daughters. His father, Sean, and his father before him had been the principal teachers in the local national school. His mother, Pauline McNamara, also came from the locality.
East Clare was strong Fianna Fáil territory as part of the constituency of the party founder, Eamon de Valera. The young Dick Walsh grew up in a family where it was believed to be "faintly heretical" to criticise de Valera, as he recalled in his book in 1986 about Fianna Fáil. But this was not to save the party and some of its leading figures feeling the lash of Dick Walsh's most outspoken columns in later years. Incidentally, even the father switched to vote for Clann na Poblachta after disillusionment with de Valera over his handling of the teachers' strike in 1948.
After national school in Cratloe, Dick Walsh received his secondary education in St Munchin's Diocesan College in Limerick, although he was clearly not destined to progress to the seminary as some of his fellow students were. He was destined for journalism, which was not a particularly attractive or well-paid calling in the 1950s.
He began on the Clare Champion where he combined local journalism with writing poetry. The newspaper in 1958 published his slim volume entitled New Rain on the Leaves.
By then he had moved to the Irish Press in Dublin where he met his future wife, Ruth Kelly, who was Woman's Editor. He also attended meetings of a left-wing Catholic movement at a time when he had not yet moved to his later disillusionment with Catholicism and organised religion. This was followed by a move to London where he worked for several local newspapers including the Wimbledon Borough News and the Kilburn Times.
He also became interested in defending the rights of Irish building workers and helped edit a bulletin for them. He continued with his creative writing and became friendly with his fellow Clare writer in exile, Edna O'Brien. His twin daughters, Francesca and Suzanne, were born to Ruth while they lived in London. He returned to Ireland in the early 1960s when work in Dublin was scarce and worked for several years on the Connacht Tribune, where one of his colleagues was Sean Duignan, who later became RTE's Political Correspondent. Their paths were to cross again when both had moved to Dublin and eventually ended up covering the political scene.
In Dublin again, Dick Walsh did some freelance work for The Irish Times before taking the rather unusual step of moving into public relations with Arrow Advertising. Part of his job was travelling the country encouraging farmers to use more fertiliser. He wrote a booklet for the National Farmers' Association called The Farmers' Fight.
In 1968, he got a staff job with The Irish Times and was to remain there until his retirement last October. He worked briefly as a sub-editor and then moved to the newsroom as a reporter with a part-time brief to cover transport matters. When the Northern Ireland Troubles broke out in 1969 he was sent for stints to the Belfast office and covered some of the more dramatic events such as the burning of Catholic homes off the Falls Road and the arrival of the British army in August 1969.
He wrote an account of the Troubles there in the Irish language called Gearcheim in Eirinn. He is also believed to have used his influence in the left-wing circles in which he then moved to urge the Official republican movement to abandon violent means to settle the Northern Ireland problem.
The then editor, Douglas Gageby, noted Dick Walsh's writing and reporting skills and encouraged his move to political reporting under the well-known Michael McInerney, who was the Political Correspondent. In 1973, he replaced Mr McInerney and entered full-time into political reporting.
It was during the 1973 general election campaign that he struck up what was to be a long friendship with then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, whose campaign he was covering. They both had an intense interest in hurling, which Dick had played in his younger days.
The resignation of Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in December 1979 and his replacement by Charles Haughey seemed to mark a harsher, more critical line towards Fianna Fáil in Dick Walsh's writing. There was no love lost between the new Taoiseach and the political reporter. When the latter was convalescing during one of his frequent spells in hospital, he received a visit from Mr Haughey, who got a cool reception. On another occasion, Mr Lynch was a patient at the same time as Dick Walsh and they entertained each other in their respective wards.
In 1986 Dick Walsh published two books, neither of which was flattering for Mr Haughey. In The Party; Inside Fianna Fáil, he wrote of the then leader as dominating Fianna Fáil "in a way that no other leader had done, in the style of an east European head of state whose basilisk stare follows his citizens wherever they go."
Brian Lenihan, who reviewed the book, dismissed it as "not a work of great scholarship" and accused the author of repeating "the stereotyped image of Mr Haughey".
In Des O'Malley: A Political Portrait, Dick Walsh, using lengthy interviews with the leader, tried to put the rise of the Progressive Democrats in context. The study is clearly approving of Mr O'Malley, who was a distant cousin, for his stance on Northern Ireland and contraception. But in view of Dick Walsh's left-wing views on economic matters, it is not surprising that he would later write critically of PD policies in this area.
In the 1980s his back problems, at first thought to be a slipped disc, were diagnosed as spondylitis, causing curvature of the spine and increasing pain. The complications arising from his condition brought him near death a number of times, but he fought back and wrote his columns from his hospital bed.
In 1985 he was appointed Political Editor, which meant he did not have to cover the Dáil on a daily basis. In fact he wrote increasingly from his home where he followed the news through newspapers, radio and television more closely than colleagues back at the office.
As Irish public and business life showed itself pervaded by scandals and corrupt practices, his anger mounted, mainly against Mr Haughey and Fianna Fáil, which must have come to dread his weekly column excoriating its shortcomings. At times, even his admirers felt he was going too far, but when the tribunals some years later exposed even more scandalous events, Dick Walsh felt more than justified. He served on the Commission on the Newspaper Industry which reported in 1996.
He always had a generous welcome for those visitors to his period home outside Bray who were prepared to run the gauntlet of yelping dogs and inquisitive cats which surrounded him. There he was lovingly tended by Ruth, Francesca and Suzanne. To friends who expected him to be dead 12 years earlier, it was almost miraculous to see how he was rising above his handicap and writing and talking more vigorouslythan ever.
In 1999, he was appointed Assistant Editor - Politics.
He also found time to be an active campaigner for the reform of The Irish Times Trust and the disestablishment of the "A" share controlled by Maj Thomas B. McDowell. At an earlier period, he had been to the fore in trade union matters inside the newspaper and played an important role in negotiating better pay and conditions for his fellow journalists. He helped set up the Editorial Committee concerned with journalistic standards and ethics. He also provided valuable advice to the National Union of Journalists and until days before his death was offering to help the union in its opposition to the amendment of the Freedom of Information Act.
He is survived by his wife, Ruth; daughters, Francesca and Suzanne; brother, Johnny, and sisters, Noelle and Anne.
Dick Walsh: born October 29th, 1937; died March 11th, 2003