Emily O'Reilly

This book was launched just last week.

Emily O'Reilly, the former great journalist herself and of course ombudsman for the EU among other jobs that she's held since.

She said at the launch, Frank Connolly's great journalistic gift was not simply his writing style, and she said was, but I think we can say is as well, ongoing, as not simply his writing style nor his investigative skills, both of which are evident in this book, but his sense of smell.

Frank could smell a rat in a hermetically sealed and sterile fridge.

This is a role that was established in 1983.

Emily O'Reilly held the position for some time and I think drew a lot of favourable comments.

But I've been looking through your reports and one of the things, the thing, that I find most striking is how few reports have been generated in the 43 years that that office has been there.

And it's broken down into a couple of headings.

of course the public sector is a huge um and you've mentioned there sometimes we're only as good as the people doing the particular job and some people do the job really well other people don't do the job as well but in fact the culture should be for everybody to be doing the job well and for everybody to achieve excellence but i just want to make the point we don't accept at face value what public bodies say to us we we look at files we examine records we satisfy ourselves that and we sometimes find that what we're told or what the person was told isn't isn't it isn't actually accurate But also, I'm not sure if you've come across the work we've done in the area of access to transport for people with disabilities.

And I think one of the strengths of the office has been actually that we each pass on the baton to the other.

And you mentioned Emily O'Reilly.

Emily O'Reilly started some very good work in relation to pointing out the inequalities in terms of access to transport for people with disabilities.

She having worked here for us many years ago, long before probably Peter, you and I came here.

Emily O'Reilly, she is, as we said, a very experienced journalist, author.

She then moved on into becoming the ombudsman here in Ireland and then went off to be the ombudsman in Europe.

And Peter, you did the interview with Emily O'Reilly.

Fascinating on so many levels.

Very different, I suppose, to our business interviews here.

Ireland and they're also accessible they're all very small and easy to read which is great if anybody wants to go back to them

but also she wasn't given the sort of I think what was I liked about most of the books is that she gave she wasn't afraid to go against the sort of prevailing view and particularly as I said we'll get into the Veronica Gearing book afterwards but she certainly didn't deliver what was the majority view on Veronica Gearing in that book

And

Emily O'Reilly.

I love it.

This is so cool.