Profile Emily O'Reilly: Emily O'Reilly may have enjoyed a high-flying media career but she now faces a far different set of challenges as Ombudsman, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent
The response of Emily O'Reilly's fellow journalists this week to her appointment as the next Ombudsman and Information Commissioner was one of "shock and awe". Very few of them instantly exclaimed with pleasure and approval about the news. More typically, they paused and then struggled to compose a measured response that didn't sound grudging. Many failed in this regard.
Few colleagues are among her good friends, which is not to say she is widely disliked - she is not. She is described by those working with and around her as ruthless and constantly focused on what she wants. While most journalists work steadily at what is essentially a craft, O'Reilly has become a media star, headhunted and offered high salaries by a string of employers as others toiled in her wake.
When pressed this week, some of those who had to pause before reacting to her appointment - which is entirely in the gift of the Government and involves no selection process - said it was because they wondered whether her undoubted communication skills were the main attributes required by an Ombudsman and Information Commissioner.
Others were a little less concerned about the matching of the skills to the post, and a little more personal.
They said that as a colleague, she received more help than she gave. Women said she was "a man's woman" - a grievous fault in many of their eyes. They say her manner is flirtatious and emotionally manipulative, whether by accident or design. She makes men feel like helping her out. Such men are suckers for feminine charm, say these women colleagues. Male colleagues say this is true, and that she has loads of it.
She admits herself that this is true. She had a significant speech and language development problem as a child (not much sign of that now), became terribly shy and was bullied desperately in an all-girls school.
"It comes from that. I find men easier, more straightforward," she says, while emphasising that she does have a number of close women friends. She is happier at home with her husband, children and locally based friends than in the city centre pubs frequented by journalists and media movers and shakers.
A (female) friend suggests the lack of warmth among some towards her appointment is based simply on professional jealousy: "she skated across the surface of the journalistic profession while a lot of us got bogged down doing drudge work for a lot less money.
"She's blonde, she's gorgeous, she's married to a great guy. She has five beautiful kids, a magnificent house, was never dented by the job, and still comes to the press ball in high-heeled shoes and a backless dress, which not many of us can do after five babies. She has it all. She has staff. No wonder people resent her."
She also has a lot of talent, and people familiar with the work of the Ombudsman's and Information Commissioner's office said that her particular talents may make her eminently suitable for the role. Both offices require dogged persistence in dealing with public bodies and intimate inside knowledge of the system. She has the persistence but not the detailed insider knowledge.
However the legislation setting up both offices gives great scope for delegation of functions. While the two previous Ombudsmen - Kevin Murphy and Michael Mills - tended to get into many cases in great detail, much of this work could be delegated to the 60 to 70 staff, leaving O'Reilly free to use her high public profile to represent the offices to the public and internationally, and to concentrate on broader policy issues.
It is ironic that a journalist who railed against the Government's proposals to curtail the Freedom of Information Act with typical certainty, will be the person to make important decisions on the implementation of the newly restricted legislation.
She is personally friendly with the Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy who proposed her for the post. However that does not guarantee him a quiescent office holder.
Now aged 45, Emily O'Reilly is originally from Tullamore, Co Offaly. Her parents were deeply embedded in Fine Gael, her father campaigning for the late Tom O'Higgins and her mother a friend of the late Oliver J. Flanagan. Her family moved to Dublin during her childhood.
At UCD, O'Reilly studied French and Spanish, moving to TCD for a H Dip teaching qualification and then to France for a year to teach English. On her return, she decided to work in journalism, starting out on a work experience programme in the old Sunday Tribune. She joined the paper again after it closed and reopened in 1983.
"Blonde ambition" was how she was described in the late 1980s by the then government press secretary P.J. Mara. For more than 20 years, O'Reilly has moved from high-profile job to high-profile job in journalism, never doing anything for long enough to get burnt out. In a profession where long-haul and often tedious routine work is commonplace, she has worked in short bursts, always maintaining a high personal profile and never becoming dependent on one employer.
She has got scoops in her time, her first being that of the death of Anne Lovett and her baby in Granard, Co Longford 20 years ago. Her highest profile story was the publication of details of a government policy document on Northern Ireland in 1993 which sparked a Garda investigation. She broke a series of stories as political correspondent of the Irish Press from 1989 to 1994.
But it is O'Reilly's strength as a writer rather than as a story-getter which is her greatest asset. She has a racy, flowing prose style full of anecdotes, metaphors, one-line put-downs and style. As an opinion columnist, this ensured she was read much more avidly than many journalists who did twice the amount of research. As a news writer, it meant that even when she hadn't new details to add to a story, she wrote it so well that it engaged a reader more than other stories containing new information.
She married Stephen Ryan in 1987, then a colleague in the Sunday Tribune and one of the leading newspaper and magazine designers in Ireland. She took a year out of journalism to go on a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University before returning to Ireland to work as a freelance journalist, and then to join the Irish Press.
There then followed a remarkable decade during which she managed to hold five coveted jobs in journalism, write three books and have five children.
Her first book, Candidate, about the election of Mary Robinson as president, was published in 1991. Her 1992 book, Masterminds of the Right, was the best received of the three, detailing the individuals behind campaigns against contraception, divorce and abortion.
Her only high-profile career disappointment was her failure to be appointed editor of the Sunday Tribune in 1994, when the post went to Peter Murtagh, now foreign editor of The Irish Times. That year, she left the Irish Press for the Sunday Business Post where she became political editor.
In 1997 she took on the gruelling task of presenting a morning news programme from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on the national commercial radio station Radio Ireland, now Today FM, while holding onto her Sunday Business Post job. She stood the almost impossible demands on her time for almost a year.
The 1998 publication of Veronica Guerin: The Life and Death of a Crime Reporter, was the most controversial event in her career. It asserted that the Sunday Independent had failed to give the murdered journalist the support she needed, that they should have seen that she was recklessly entering too far into the criminals' world and that the newspaper should have stopped her.
Publication of the book was courageous for two reasons. Firstly, the Sunday Independent publishes articles robustly attacking those who cross it - if you are thin skinned, you can pay dearly for making an enemy of that newspaper.
Secondly, it was clear that the book would be denounced as being motivated by professional jealousy from one of the State's "trophy journalists" towards another who, in death, had acquired hero status. This was most unfair. O'Reilly would have seen this coming, and wrote the book anyway.
In December 1998 she began her very short period as editor of Magill magazine, resigning the following August amid the controversy over publication of advertisements for "health studios" - some of which were believed to be brothels - in the title's stable-mate In Dublin. She returned to the Sunday Business Post as political correspondent, leaving just over a year ago for the Sunday Times.
Recently her work rate has slowed down - if writing a high-profile weekly column for the highest paying broadsheet newspaper in the State can be called slowing down.
Last Sunday was O'Reilly's last column, and may well be her last piece of journalism. While she will not take up her new post until June 1st, she says she would be hopelessly compromised if she were to attempt to continue commenting on public life as someone about to become a public office holder.
She has remarked to several colleagues that this means she will not be paid between now and June 1st.
The knowledge that she must wait two months before starting to receive the €172,409 salary has not yet provoked widespread sympathy.