Ballina-born reporter had 'a sharp eye for detail and brilliance'

Michael Finlan, who died on December 19th last, aged 92, was a print journalist and broadcaster with a distinctive lyrical style during his time as western correspondent for The Irish Times.

Combining his fluency in writing with an engaging wit, some of his Irish Times sketches during the Haughey years were so sharp that the former Taoiseach sought him out when he was in Galway.

Finlan was one of five children reared over a pub and grocery shop at Ardnaree in Ballina. Unable to settle at the local St Muredach’s College secondary school, he was sent to Rockwell in Co Tipperary where he had an inspiring English teacher, took to the classics, and loved the cinema when back at home.

He joined the Western People in the summer of 1950, where he became firm friends with another young reporter John Healy, from Charlestown, who was the newspaper's GAA correspondent.

“Our workplace was nothing more than a bench in the case room on which were perched a couple of typewriters so old they might have been used to type the Dead Sea Scrolls!,” Finlan said. "One of the printers, Henry Lynch, was a self-appointed critic of the magnum opuses being churned out by us hotshot reporters….. He’d glance over our shoulder at what we were writing and pronounce his verdict: ‘A load of rubbish’.” 

Western People editor James Laffey recalls that journalists did not use bylines back then, using pen-names for sport. So Healy was 'Kipper' and Finlan was 'Pembroke' - a name he picked because he thought it was rugby-sounding and he wanted to make a point about the GAA ban on foreign games which he opposed.

Finlan reported on the All-Ireland Senior Football Final in 1950 between Mayo and Louth, but missed out on the memorable 1951 All-Ireland - Mayo’s last big success - as he had by then left to join Healy in the Irish News Agency (INA) in Dublin.

He was sent to Belfast by the INA in 1952 and again for The Irish Press and spent 12 years in broadcasting with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and CTV Canada. He was back in Ireland when he met a nurse named Marie Costello, from Skehana, Co Galway, at a party and told a friend that he was going to marry her – which he did.

He joined The Irish Times in 1969, where his friend Healy had been recruited by the then editor Douglas Gageby. Almost immediately he was sent to Belfast, where he had to employ his new-found North American twang to talk himself and colleagues Jack Fagan and Aengus Fanning out of a tight spot.

"Who do you'se represent anyway?", a “tough-looking” loyalist in the Shankill had asked the trio.

“Luckily Fagan and Fanning sang dumb, realising that their Meath and Kerry accents could get us all lynched, and I replied in a supercharged transatlantic accent. ‘We're from American television, here to cover the big story and in particular, to get the Protestant angle on it’,” Finlan wrote.

Finlan served as Irish Times western correspondent from 1973 to his retirement in 1996, covering major news and arts – Galway Arts Festival founder Ollie Jennings recalls how encouraging he was during their early years.

Former Irish Times editor Conor Brady says he was “one of that cohort of journalists - many from the west - who brought a rugged integrity to Irish journalism”, having learned their trade in “the crucible of local newspapers” in the 1950s.

Many of them joined the Irish Press and “fought hard to maintain their independence and their loyalty to the truth,” Brady says.

“Management - and not just in The Irish Press - was harsh and intolerant. A word of complaint from a churchman or a Fianna Fáil politician could bring woeful consequences. Not a few migrated to Gageby's Irish Times, including Healy and Finlan,” Brady says.

Kevin O’Sullivan, who worked with him in Galway and was also Irish Times editor, says that Finlan had “a sharp eye for detail and brilliance”, particularly with his Dáil sketches during the Haughey years.

“On one famous occasion, the then Taoiseach [Haughey] landed aboard his son’s helicopter outside Galway cathedral during a general election campaign, and emerged demanding “Where’s Mr Finlan?”; clearly the only media person he had any time for,” O’Sullivan notes.

Finlan had “a tremendous ability to reflect the character and soul of the west”, O’Sullivan says, noting he “fully understood the factors at play in the protracted and often bitter rod licence dispute of the 1980s”.

Michael Finlan is survived by his wife Marie, children Maryrose, Michael and James and granddaughter Joyce.