IRELAND
The Irish Times
FINTAN O’TOOLE
MARY RAFTERY was arguably the finest Irish journalist of the last 25 years and unarguably the most influential.
Because of her, there are two groups of people for whom Ireland will never be the same again. The Catholic hierarchy will never recover the authority it lost when she exposed its systematic covering up of child abuse and Irish children will never again be so utterly exposed to systematic exploitation by those in power.
At a time when the value and the values of professional journalism are being called into question, her work stands as one of the greatest examples anywhere of the capacity of a committed, skilled and eloquent reporter to change things for the better.
I remember vividly the first time I saw Mary, in 1975, when we were both 17-year-olds newly arrived in University College Dublin. I was waiting, along with the other awkward, uncertain freshers, for a class to begin in a huge lecture theatre when this small woman appeared at the podium to tell us about problems at the College of Music, where she also studied, and to ask for support for a protest.
Everybody shut up and listened, for she was like an adult among adolescents: serious, authoritative, able to communicate with precision and clarity.
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