UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Monday, 5 December 2011 at 10.30 a.m.
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR DAVID FARRELL, UCD School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin on 5 December 2011, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on OLIVIA O’LEARY
President, Distinguished Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen
Olivia O’Leary is one of the country’s most respected journalists and most loved commentators. Educated at St Leo’s College, Carlow and at UCD (where she earned a BA degree in English, French and Spanish), she trained as a journalist with the Nationalist and Leinster Times in Carlow. In the 1970s she began working for the Irish Times as a parliamentary sketchwriter. It was in the same decade that she also joined RTÉ as a news reporter and then current affairs presenter, working on programmes like Today Tonight, and Questions and Answers. She later moved to the UK where she became the first woman presenter on the BBC’s Newsnight. She also presented Yorkshire Television’s documentary programme, First Tuesday.
Olivia’s time in the UK showed that she was not just a native talent, that she could cut it with the best in British broadcasting. She could have chosen to stay there. It is their loss and our great gain that she opted to return home in the mid-1980s, returning to the flagship current affairs programme Today Tonight and its successor Prime Time.
Olivia won three Jacob’s Awards during her broadcasting career with RTÉ. She also won a Sony Award for her BBC Radio 4 programme, Between Ourselves.
But this potted history simply does not do her justice. There is so much more to know about Olivia O’Leary, such as her love of music – the fact that she is reportedly a first-rate piano player, and not averse to tinkling the keys to lighten up flagging dinner parties.
Of course, it’s Olivia’s journalistic style that ultimately marks her out. Perhaps it’s her small town roots in Graignamanagh, perhaps it’s how she cut her teeth in a local newspaper that defined her as a journalist with a meticulous eye for detail, for accuracy, for carefully checking facts.
Her period in the Irish Times writing Dáil sketches was where her true skills were brought into sharp relief – and how she dominated that genre! This was probably where she first revealed her quirky style, her merciless wit.
It is her observations of people that are a defining characteristic. She is a true craftswoman with words, producing vivid images, wonderful turns of phrase, as was revealed to the wider world to such great effect during her speech at the National Convention Centre last May in honour of the Queen’s visit. Olivia’s opening remarks caught the mood perfectly, referring to how “we were a little bit worried about the curtsy”.
It is her weekly Drivetime political columns that Olivia is best known for at present, and these are an art form. It is such a pity that so few of the radio columns have been published, but a good place to sample is her book on Politicians and Other Animals, where you can read her hilarious description of Sinn Féin deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin’s “lovely hands” that are produced “one at a time from his pockets like delicious bars of chocolate” whenever he stands up to speak in the Dáil.
Or there are the wonderful descriptions of the late Brian Lenihan (senior), a politician who clearly fascinated Olivia. She describes how “Like Father McKenzie in ‘Eleanor Rigby’, [he] had a selection of faces that he kept in a jar by the door. One was his mask of righteous indignation. This Brian would produce to great effect whenever he felt he was being cornered”.
There is an important point to note about Olivia and that is her regard for the importance of representative politics and her respect for politicians as a class. As she has written: “There is a relationship of healthy tension between press and politicians in a democracy. It’s not a critical press which kills that relationship but a cynical one.”
Olivia has never been afraid to like politicians. She makes friendships while still keeping her distance. When she anchored current affairs programmes, politicians could never take her for granted, as some learned to their cost when being cross-examined relentlessly by her.
Olivia was married to the late Paul Tansey, who at the time of his death in 2008, was the economics editor of the Irish Times. He was a first-class economics commentator when these were so few in number. Paul shared with Olivia a strong attachment to the importance of high ethical standards in public life, something that comes out so strongly in Olivia’s books – Politicians and Other Animals and also the wonderful biography of Mary Robinson that she co-authored with Dr Helen Burke.
In her own journalistic work, in how she so generously helps others, in her renowned reputation for supporting younger colleagues, Olivia has personified these higher ethical standards at a time when our country so desperately needs them.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hanc meam filiam, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.