I think everyone who knew Mary Holland loved her. Her goodness and gentleness and sense of humour were irresistible. She will be hugely missed as a person, writes Garret FitzGerald
And she will be - indeed, because of her long illness, has already been - greatly missed as a journalist.
For she was a great journalist, not just because she wrote so well but because her deep humanity and her capacity for empathy with people of very different outlooks from her own gave her special insights into politics, and in particular into the complex politics of Northern Ireland.
Of course, the fact that she had such integrity, and was so well liked, and therefore trusted, by politicians, civil servants, and other activists meant that she was often very well informed.
And she knew very well how to use with discretion and judgment the information to which she became party.
As a result, she not only kept public opinion here and elsewhere extremely well-informed but - and this, unusual in journalism - actually helped to influence events in a positive direction.
I do not think that our public opinion is sufficiently conscious of the great debt that we all owe to good journalism of Mary's kind. Far too often, we just take it for granted.
By contrast, we have no hesitation about denouncing trivial or trashy journalism - of which we see too much.
Perhaps it is easier for people who have held political office to appreciate to the full the contribution to the public interest made by great journalists like Mary Holland.
And this is not just a question of being aware of how such writers convey accurately to the public the course of events that it is their job to observe - although it is always a pleasure to see that done well.
No, a good political journalist will contribute to politics itself in several different ways.
First of all, politicians benefit because they often learn from good journalists information that is useful to them, and which their own sources may not always provide.
I recall that as minister for foreign affairs, although served by a remarkably able team of well-informed diplomats, I often benefited through supplementing their diplomatic reports with the accounts of some expert journalists, especially in Belfast and in Brussels, upon whose judgment I knew I could rely.
And, as taoiseach, there were journalists I was always glad to hear from, and to help as much as possible, because I learnt so much from them during phone calls they made to me.
My staff knew who they should put through to me at once: Mary Holland was, of course, one of these.
Moreover, no one outside politics can readily appreciate that being in government sometimes cuts you off from the real world - especially when at certain times you are physically confined to your ministry or to parliament, or, most curiously, if you are a foreign minister attending meetings of the UN which since about 1950 meets in New York.
(Although most people have forgotten this, originally the UN met in Paris, where I recall, with Joan, hearing the results of the US 1948 presidential election in which, to everyone's astonishment, Truman beat Dewey. In Paris we also heard Pandit Nehru offering a thoroughly unconvincing justification of India's invasion of Hyderabad on the grounds that were precisely the reverse of those he had earlier used to justify the invasion of Kashmir.)
The trouble about the UN moving to New York was that, except when the US is itself actively engaged in some part of the world, the US media coverage of global events is deplorably inadequate.
Consequently, when I was at the UN I sometimes felt almost completely cut off from the real world outside - until, of course, The Irish Times brought it to me a day late.
I sometimes had a similar experience in Leinster House.
I particularly remember the night of the bombs in 1972, when Fine Gael was led by this event to reverse its stance on an Emergency Powers Bill.
Many deputies who left the House that night at about 4 a.m. believed that Liam Cosgrave had lost the support of his party some eight hours earlier, and would be resigning next day - only to find when they woke up next morning that earlier that night the leader of the opposition had had a triumph on television, of which many of us in Leinster House were totally unaware. Three months later he was elected taoiseach.
That was an extreme case of what I call "parliamentary isolation". But all politicians, those in government most of all, can at times momentarily get out of touch with the real world outside.
They may as a result take a decision that seems eminently sensible until reality is brought home to them by journalists telling them next day, or perhaps several days later, that in their view, and that of the public outside Leinster House, they've made a serious blunder.
Vigilant journalists also protect the public interest by identifying and publicising self-serving decisions that politicians are sometimes tempted to make.
In this task they have occasionally been inhibited by our laws of libel for although these laws sometimes appear too weak to protect the privacy of citizens, they are at the same time too tightly drawn to enable investigative journalists to expose some of the evils that have occasionally affected our political system.
The importance of investigative journalism to a community should never be underestimated.
When, in 1995, I was appointed to the RTÉ Authority I and my new colleagues raised this issue at once.
We had the impression that the news and current affairs staff felt unsure of the backing they would receive if they undertook investigative journalism as distinct from merely reporting the outcome of newspaper investigations.
A message went out that the news and current affairs staff would be backed by our authority even if (as did, in fact, happen not long afterwards) they made an honest mistake in the process. Since then, we've seen some very valuable investigative work by RTÉ.
The trouble is that the remarkable contribution made to our society by outstanding journalists is often missed by a public opinion that is much more likely to give out about the poor quality of some of the journalism in parts of what is called the popular press. Consciousness of the bad sometimes drives out recognition of the good.
Perhaps, when we are tempted to go overboard about bad journalism, we should just pause for a moment - and think of Mary Holland.