Even now, six months on, I still catch myself dialling Tommie Gorman’s number. 

Often, it is because a big story is unfolding and I want to canvas his view on how best to cover it or what editorial line to take. Other times, it is simply to chat. Because Tommie loved to chat; conversation flowed from one topic to another with wonderful ease. Tommie could talk for Ireland. But he could often listen. And listening is what made him such a brilliant journalist and a such marvellous person. He understood people because he listened to what they said. He listened deeply.

Often, as I reach for the phone, it takes a moment to realise that Tommie is no longer with us, that he died having given so much to so many and yet with so much more to give.

I know I am not the only person who misses his words or his kind counsel. Far more people knew him much longer and much better than I did. 

But over this holiday period, it is impossible not to reflect upon his memory or his legacy. 

Tommie was the lynchpin of our weekend coverage, an anchor who brought knowledge and expertise to his columns. His death, at the age of just 68, has shocked us to our core. In the aftermath of his death, Thomas teased his way through Tommie’s political coverage, tracing how his deep understanding of the enduring fragility of peace in Northern Ireland transpired through many of the columns he wrote on the site over the past three years. 

Tom wrote about Tommie’s infectious sense of the possible, and how he helped so many people, including both Tom and I, in so many ways. One of Tommie’s reasons for joining The Currency was the freedom to write on other areas, on subjects he felt passionate about. And, we also picked out a selection of his work with us to highlight the breadth of his range and the beauty of his writing.

We sought to celebrate his life as best we could, although, in truth, we could not come close to summing up his life, his legacy, or his human impact. 

As I wrote at the time, sitting down with him for a coffee was a public event. People came up to chat to him as if drawn by a gravitational force. Even people who did not know him felt that they did, and they felt at ease approaching him. And Tommie, would, in turn, chat back effortlessly, drawing them further and further into his orbit.

“Tommie had a unique and rare ability. He could look you in the eye and see you for who you were. He could see your truth, warts and all. He could see your flaws, your fears, your hopes, your potential. And he could talk to you about those things in a way that helped you. He did this with countless people all over the country,” I wrote. “He could chat and schmooze for Ireland.  But, when he needed to, he could cut to the bone with surgical precision.”

Tommie left behind a huge professional and personal legacy. We miss him deeply, and this Christmas, our thoughts are with his beloved wife Ceara Roche and their two children Moya and Joe.

Tommie was not the only person to pass away this year. And over the past year, we wrote about a number of major public figures who died. 

Tony O’Reilly walked among the great leaders of the world. But he never forgot the people many ignore

Tony O’Reilly was a colossus in Irish public life, straddling the world of sport and business with grace, ambition and success. His career was glittering and multi-faceted. Towards the end, his fortunes fell and bankruptcy followed. But that is a mere footnote to a life that achieved so much in so many different spheres.

When he died in May, we sought to do justice to life and his accomplishments, although, in truth, no one could come close to describing his impacty. Thomas looked at his legacy to the dairy industry and to Irish agriculture through his pioneering work with Kerrygold, while Anne Harris, his former editor at The Sunday Independent, explained how O’Reilly, despite his reputation as a teak-tough businessman, believed newspapers could change hearts and minds.

She wrote: “He believed free speech is a newspaper in which one has the right to question the prevailing consensus and values of the day. The fact is there was nothing surprising about his backing The Sunday Independent’s campaign against the Provisional IRA. After all, O’Reilly was instrumental in cutting off much of the IRA’s American money by setting up the Ireland Funds. Judy Hayes, a long-time administrator of the Ireland Funds, once told me ruefully that he was very hands-on there. ‘He could spot a dud figure a mile off,’ she explained.”

On the day of his funeral, Sam Smyth argued that O’Reilly deserved better than the way he was treated in the end by AIB, who triggered his bankruptcy. 

Looking at his legacy and his role in Irish industry, Smyth wrote: “After the financial crash many Irish people were unable to pay their debts, but they were not bankrupted. Why was the decision taken to bankrupt O’Reilly? Or not to call a halt to such a move? Options other than bankruptcy were available. At that time, the bank was majority state-owned. Like all the banks it did deals with people unable to repay their debts, but not O’Reilly. What was the motivation for what occurred? A very senior politician in the then Fine Gael government and another senior politician in the Labour Party told me that bankruptcy was O’Reilly’s just deserts.”

At that funeral, his three sons pay tribute to the man who gave them inspiration and self-belief. We printed their eulogies.

As an editor and executive at INM, Michael Brophy had many meetings and social encounters with O’Reilly. In a wonderful piece, Brophy recalled his unfettered ambition and charm, and his understanding of the true importance of media. The ending to Brophy’s piece was poignant as he described the financial strain at INM and on O’Reilly: “However, the end, like all endings, was not nice. A private plane took a small group of INM executives to Deauville. As it banked and turned right along the French coast to the small French seaside resort, few had any inkling of what was ahead. But back in that small art gallery canteen, the financial realities were spelt out and we knew that the time was upon us. We have lost a giant of business, and we are the worse for it.”

Anne Harris: Mary O’Rourke believed you had to work with men for the emancipation of women

Mary O’Rourke was first elected to the Dáil in the Longford-Westmeath constituency in November 1982 and would go on to serve as minister for education, health, and public enterprise over the course of a political career spanning four decades. She was deputy leader of Fianna Fáil from 1994 to 2002.

She was a political giant from a deeply political family. But, as Anne Harris explained in her piece in the aftermath of her sad passing, she was also a wonderful person who progressed the women’s movement in Ireland greatly without ever proclaiming herself a feminist.

“She took no part in feminism as a political ideology. But it would be a mistake to think that she was not a feminist; I suspect she couldn’t stand the ghetto atmosphere of those women’s groups. They did not suit her taste or temperament. I believe she didn’t like the edgy hysteria, the undercurrent of opportunism at one extreme and the extremism that banned men from anti-rape meetings at the other,” Harris wrote. 

“She didn’t believe it was a necessarily healthy scene. I suspect she felt that that ideology weakened women as human beings, and ultimately weakened the women’s movement and the political struggle for economic equality and political progress.  Mary O’Rourke believed you had to work with men for the emancipation of women.”

“Kaizen never fails, Kaizen forever” – retail trailblazer Paul McGlade’s enduring legacy

Paul McGlade was a consummate retailer with an instinct for knowing what to buy and how to sell it. His story, while relatively little known, was one of the all-time greats of modern Irish business. And in the days that followed his passing, Tom Lyons, aided by contributions from McGlade’s friends and family, sought to tell it. 

McGlade was the founder of Therapie Clinics, Pygmalion and formerly Champion Sports. And over the years, he was involved in numerous other retail chains and business interests. Without doubt, he changed the face of the high street in Ireland. “One thing about my Dad is he was ahead of his time,” Paul McGlade Jr told Tom.

His vision never stopped. In the 1980s, when there was a glut of Rubik’s Cubes in Germany, McGlade bought them all and created the craze in Ireland. When rollerskates took off in America, he bought truckloads to sell here.

“He would have five or six containers always coming in,” Rita McGlade recalled. “His thing was buy three, get one free. He always believed in offering people bargains.” On the day he died suddenly in Spainin August, Paul McGlade was texting friends. He had heard a retail business was for sale and he was trying to put a consortium together to buy it. Paul McGlade still had a lot to do.

One of his last texts to his daughter Katie said: “Every negative in health and business is a fantastic wake-up emergency call for the better in a positive way to create new opportunities. Look out for the new opportunity to improve. Kaizen never fails. Kaizen forever.”

The epic nature of Nell’s heartbreak showed the epic nature of her capacity to love

In August, the journalist, author and feminist campaigner Nell McCafferty died at the age of 80. Anne Harris, who knew McCafferty over many decades, wrote an immensely thoughtful piece on her life and her legacy. 

Harris recalls a woman who was one of the funniest you could ever meet, as well as one of the saddest. But it was this contraction that made her what she was. 

“She was a republican, a feminist and a socialist. It may have been one seamless robe to her, but not to everybody and sometimes one was used to further the less salubrious part of another. Renegade Nell was loved by working-class women because she was one of them and talked their language; loved by middle-class women because her radicalism gave credibility to their radical chic. The establishment purported to fear her feminism, but a Fianna Fáil minister George Colley delivered an early — and unanswerable — put down with the phrase ‘well-heeled and articulate’,” Harris wrote.

Harris wrote poignantly about McCafferty’s relationship with writer Nuala O’Faolain, and how its end brought such devastation to McCafferty. “It was clear that O’Faolain had never really understood the truth and integrity of lesbian love. After that, Nell seemed possessed of what Virginia Woolf called the ‘untamed veracity perpetually at war with the accepted order of things’, which often accompanies great grief,” according to Harris. 

The article ends with the following lines: “Nell McCafferty was an iconoclast who herself became something of an icon. She had flaws. But it was in that terrible loneliness that she was most human, most dignified. The epic nature of her heartbreak and grief show the epic nature of her capacity to love. What more can we ask for in our icons.”

By any measure – not just in business and inventing – David McMurtry was a remarkable person

Dubliner David McMurtry, who died in Gloucestershire at the age of 84 in November, built Renishaw, a €3 billion global business based on precision engineering and measurement tools.

The company he co-founded in April 1973, originally to develop a precision measuring tool for use on the Concorde supersonic jet, now employs 2,600 people in Gloucestershire, and a similar number in 36 countries round the world.

The Clontarf native was named on more than 200 Renishaw patents, with R&D leading to pioneering innovation central to its success. In that context, McMurtry was the most prolific Irish inventor of recent times – perhaps ever.

By any measure, the Irishman’s remarkable life was one well-lived. And writing in the days that followed his passing, John Reynolds, a journalist who interviewed McMurty on many occasions over the past 12 years, captured his brilliance and his spirit. 

“It was always fascinating to talk to someone who preferred to keep a low profile,” John wrote. “The Irishman was always generous with his time. As perhaps the journalist who had the privilege of getting to know him best, he reminded me a little of my two grandfathers, both of whom were car and aviation enthusiasts.”

Edna O’Brien and Ernest Gébler: A young woman, an older man and a fateful clash of desire

Edna O’Brien, the Irish-born, London-based novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter, died this year at the age of 93.

O’Brien had a well-publicised love-hate relationship with her native country. But in her tribute to O’Brien, which I believe was one of the standout pieces published by The Currency this year, Anne Harris investigated the story of O’Brien’s relationship with Ernest Gébler.

Forty years ago, Harris made her way up a Dingly Dell driveway near Dalkey to an extraordinary chapter in Edna O’Brien’s life. The story she unravelled, through interviews, notebooks, and letters, is as complicated as any of O’Brien’s novels. It is impossible to do justice to the depth of the piece by Harris, so I won’t try. 

Instead, I will reprint here the final words from the essay: 

“They are all gone now, Edna, Ernest and Jane who died mowing the lawn. And it was clear to me that day that only her voice, the voice of the woman he had seen only once in the previous 20 years, could have confronted the pity, the forgiveness and the sadness which were fast becoming a mere echo beneath the hammering wheels of the Dart that carried me away.”

“It wouldn’t be a party without Malachy McCourt”: Remembering the bon vivant New Yorker

Malachy McCourt, thespian, publican and best-selling memoirist, died in March this month in New York city. He was 92. In the days that followed, Sam Smyth wrote a tribute to McCourt, a genuine Renaissance man who carved out a life in the US after leaving a deprived Limerick in his youth.

“There was, and is, much more to Malachy McCourt than the cheery face he showed the world. A careful examination of his expansive portfolio of words and performances reveals a keen intellect artfully disguised. Asked last year what he wanted his legacy to be, he said: ‘I would hope I was kind.’”

Smyth recalled the first time he met McCourt, in a bar he ran with his brother Frank, a school teacher, in Greenwich Village. It was called the Bells Of Hell and was banned from being listed in the phone directory. “It was hip and edgy: Joey Ramone was a regular, the Clancy Brothers dropped by and Bob Dylan hung out with the owners,” Smyth recalled, adding: “Ultimately, Malachy McCourt was an entertainer and occasionally a nugget of wisdom would drop from his craftily curated blitzkrieg of words. And recalling his decades serving late nights and early deadlines, his career as an actor, writer and entrepreneur was twinned with a gift for helter-skelter mischief-making, high wit and low humour.”

Last year, at the age of 91, McCourt returned to co-hosting a Sunday morning radio show. “Sitting in a wheelchair at the opening of the Craic Fest, an annual Irish film and music festival in New York, he was determined to have the last word,” according to Smyth. “He wheeled himself into the audience and was rewarded by a spontaneous burst of applause, proclaiming: ‘It wouldn’t be a party without Malachy McCourt.’”

Máiría Cahill: I don’t know if Ian Bailey was a killer but he made me very afraid

Ian Bailey spoke at length to Máiría Cahill in the west Cork town of Schull where he was the main suspect in the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Cahill found him to be polite, edgy, guarded, a performer who could be chilling.

Bailey, who became the chief suspect for the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, died in west Co Cork in January after he suffered a suspected heart attack near the Square in Bantry and waved to some passers-by for assistance.

Cahill wrote about the time she spent with Bailey. “I’m not a nervous person, yet on the night after I had interviewed Bailey, I stood outside our holiday home in Drinane less than a minutes’ drive from where Sophie Toscan du Plantier had been battered to death, and I remembered my vague answer when he asked where I was staying. 

“I looked at the moon and suddenly felt chilled to my core, enough to go inside, check that all of the doors were locked and close the blinds, shutting out a view of Fastnet lighthouse. This was the reason Sophie Toscan du Plantier had reportedly bought her house, and had her bed raised, to see the turning beacon send shafts of light momentarily illuminating monster waves slamming white clouds of foam into the air on impact.”

From music to AI, investing and philanthropy: The eccentric brilliance of Mike Lynch

At about 4am August 19, Mike Lynch’s much-loved 56-metre yacht Bayesian was hit by a freak waterspout – a tornado at sea – which toppled its 248ft tall aluminium mast, causing it to almost capsize and take on water before sinking about 50 metres to the sea bed a short distance off the coast near Palermo.

Some 22 people were on board the vessel including ten crew, along with Lynch’s Brazilian wife, Angela Bacares, who was rescued by the Italian coastguard. Lynch, a British-Irish billionaire, was killed in the tragedy.

His death came after a recent 12-week trial in San Francisco, where in June he was acquitted of 14 counts of wire fraud and one of conspiracy related to the $11 billion (€8 billion at the time) acquisition by US tech giant HP of the software firm, Autonomy, he co-founded in 1996.

John Reynolds interviewed him on numerous occasions, including for The Currency. Throughout the interviews, Lynch struck him as slightly eccentric, with an irreverent sense of humour that came across as affable in a way that some might find disarming. He was constantly passionate about the potential of this country, Reynolds wrote in the days after his death.

“In our interviews, more than once he referred to enjoying being around fellow entrepreneurs and their optimism and enthusiasm, emphasising that managing that without damaging such people’s natural creative drive – which at times can lead to a certain amount of chaos – was perhaps more of an art than a science,” according to Reynolds.

A big-house Fine Gaeler, peace and EU builder, and deep thinker until the end: Remembering John Bruton

John Bruton, who died at the age of 76, was a giant of Irish politics, holding many of the main offices of state before becoming the EU’s ambassador to the US. The Rainbow government he had led as Taoiseach lost the election but is now well regarded by historians, economists and political commentators. As Tommie Gorman explained, Bruton’s Rainbow coalition laid the foundations of the Good Friday Agreement and cemented Ireland’s position as the poster child of the EU.

As well as examining his political legacy, Gorman also looked at the human side of Bruton. “Bruton had much in common with big-house unionists – decent people, respectful of their neighbours, with an Aga range in the kitchen of a tidy property maintained by the right equipment, stored correctly in an outhouse. Buttressed by old money but rarely if ever flash.”

He added: “In Bruton’s case, the line from Shakespeare’s Othello once quoted by Charlie Haughey seems a fitting epitaph: ‘I have done the State some service.’ He brought great credit to the difficult trade of politics.”

Remembering Fergus Clancy: A man of “exceptional integrity, decency and humanity”

Fergus Clancy, the former chief executive of the Mater Private, made a serious contribution to Irish business and healthcare. He was a mentor for many and an experienced chairperson, something that came across in the many contributions from companies and organisations he was involved in. 

His friend Brendan Lenihan, managing director of Navigo Consulting, described Clancy as “a quiet and gentle giant of a person, his stature confirmed not because of his undeniable success in business, but principally for his exceptional integrity, decency and humanity. This rare combination (and so much more) was Fergus.”

The Gaelic Players Association described him as a “firm friend and ally of players”, while Pieta House said he was an “exceptional leader” whose “legacy will live on through his contributions to Pieta and many other organisations that had the privilege of working with him”.

In his obituary, Tom Lyons wrote: “Clancy also gave back, notably becoming chairman of Pieta, which provides help to people who are experiencing thoughts of suicide or have been bereaved by suicide. He got involved in Pieta in memory of a close friend. He also served on the fitness to practise committee of the Irish Medical Council, an important role in ensuring high standards for Irish doctors.”

A revolutionary, a visionary: Eddie O’Connor was a pathfinder Ireland must follow

Fintan Drury first met Eddie O’Connor 35 years ago. Later, he chaired one of two wind energy start-ups that O’Connor built into €1 billion companies. In January, in the days after O’Connor sadly passed away, Drury reflected on a true great who passed away too soon on Saturday.

“Ireland lost one of its few real business visionaries and the global energy industry one of its few real revolutionaries. Eddie was the first person in Ireland to advocate for renewables and to warn of the dangers of continuing reliance on fossil fuels. There was a messianic quality to his urgings but often, he was listened to more intently in Europe than at home,” wrote Drury. 

“There’s an understandable fascination with how he built two businesses that were each worth well in excess of €1 billion but, to some extent, this is to miss the point. Eddie was proud of that achievement but it wasn’t his principal concern. For him, it was what those businesses did that mattered, the ultimate pride was in taking on the doubters, on fighting the power of the fossil fuel industry and, while gradually winning the debate, making money for those who backed his vision.”

Thomas Hubert also looked at his business legacy: “I’m usually unimpressed by stories of great individual leaders and believe the greatest human achievements are collective, but I have to make an exception for O’Connor. His decision to build Ireland’s first onshore wind turbine at Bellacorick in Co Mayo in the early 1990s went against the grain as the head of a fossil fuel company, Bord na Móna. From zero, it established an industry that is now supplying one-third of Ireland’s electricity.

“As founder of Airtricity, O’Connor was also behind the country’s first (and only) offshore windfarm along the coast of Arklow, Co Wicklow. Twenty years on, regulators, developers and investors are finally taking concrete steps to turn this technology into Ireland’s best chance of replacing tax-driven technology multinationals as the future bedrock of its prosperity.”

“All chalk, no digital boards. To see him operate was theatre, absolute theatre”

David Power’s death in July, aged 77, prompted a flood of genuine tributes for old ‘Pipe’, rare enough when someone passes who is worth hundreds of millions of euro – especially in a country where we are not bred to look up to the rich. Gambling, because of bookmaker practices primarily in the online age, has an increasingly negative connotation in Ireland. Yet there was no getting away from how fundamentally well-liked David Power was as a layer of wagers and a man.

Friends, colleagues and members of the racing community reflected with Johnny Ward upon the man and his legacy.

Fintan sat on the board of Paddy Power Power for six years. Reflecting on his former friend and colleague he wrote: “David was loyal. When you needed support, whatever the circumstances, it would be offered, quietly and with no expectations perhaps other than that you’d behave similarly to those who might need your help. 

“David was a teacher of the most valuable kind – someone you learned from simply by being around. David was a highly effective business presence but you appreciated that and understood it over time, not always in the moment.”