Tommie Gorman obituary: Veteran journalist covered a pivotal period in Northern Irish politics (2024)

Born: April 3rd 1956

Died: June 25th 2024

Tommie Gorman, who has died aged 68, described John Healy, the former Backbencher columnist and political writer for The Irish Times as his “mentor”. Healy gave him his break into journalism in 1977 while advising: “Reporting isn’t a job, it’s a life. Enjoy it.”

He did. Gorman loved his craft and in his 47 years as a journalist, he made his mark, working first in his hometown of Sligo as correspondent for the Western Journal which was established by Healy and his friend Jim Maguire, and then from 1980 as one of RTÉ’s leading broadcasters, and finally on his retirement from the station three years ago returning to his writing roots as a columnist for the Currency news website.

Over those years his main beat was the northwest, Europe and Northern Ireland, where he covered stories ranging from Ireland’s place in the European Union, attempts to make the political and peace process work in Northern Ireland and trying but failing to lure Roy Keane down from his perch of high dudgeon over poor World Cup facilities for the Ireland team in Saipan during the 2002 World Cup in Japan.

Gorman took to journalism at full throttle. When Healy and Maguire gave him his first work at the Western Journal they did so based on paying him by line rather than offering him a formal position, but pretty soon they discovered it was cheaper to give him a staff job because he was providing so many stories.

Aged 23, he became editor of the newspaper. He joined RTÉ in 1980 where he landed the post of northwest correspondent. In 1989, he moved to Brussels as RTÉ’s Europe correspondent. Apart from the workings, rows and intrigues of the European Commission, Council and Parliament, other big stories he covered included the Velvet Revolution from one-party communist rule to democracy in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and German reunification the following year.

Tenacious and enterprising, with the aid of a hired helicopter, he also managed to track down Seamus Heaney on holidays in Greece after he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

It rankled with him a little, but not too much, that his famous interview with Roy Keane and his entreaty “about all the little kids in Ireland” wanting him back at the World Cup in Japan became a subject of parody. But Gorman, a devoted supporter of Ireland, Sligo Rovers and Tottenham Hotspur, just wanted Ireland to have the best chance with the aid of its best player in the tournament. Gorman even had then taoiseach Bertie Ahern on standby to intervene, but Keane wasn’t for turning.

As RTÉ’s Northern editor, he reported on Stormont politics from 2001. This was three years after the Belfast Agreement when the North was entering a period of regular political crises. Viewed as fair and empathetic he earned the trust of leading politicians across the political spectrum from the likes of Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who were prepared to confide in him.

He reported diligently on the various attempts to get politics on a reasonably solid footing while sometimes, it was felt, becoming almost part of the story. Occasionally he could be sentimental in his journalism, but this was accepted as part of his distinctive style of reporting — a style to which viewers responded warmly.

He was competitive but collegial and generous to a fault. While antipathetic to cynical journalism, in private he could equally be hilarious, hard-nosed and mischievous.

In 1994 he was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumours (Net), a rare form of cancer, with which he lived stoically and cheerfully. In the 30 years of his numerous treatments for the disease his regular response to queries as to how he was getting on was “never better”, which became the title of his memoir published in late 2022.

Through his European contacts, he learned he could receive first-class treatment from medical experts in Uppsala, Sweden, later working on this knowledge to successfully argue for the same care to be available at St Vincent’s hospital in Dublin.

He was made a Freeman of his beloved Sligo in 2003 and was conferred with an honorary degree by NUIG in 2011. Over the years he made several documentaries including: The Queen’s Speech; Paisley — from Troublemaker to Peacemaker; and Inside Court No. 5, an account of the Michaela McAreavey murder trial in Mauritius. His final documentary was Ireland, Cancer and Me, a personal account of living with neuroendocrine tumours.

Quietly, he supported a network of cancer centres throughout Ireland, travelling for meetings and regularly on hand to encourage people going through difficult treatments. Endowed with a big heart, countless people have reason to be thankful for those acts of selfless humanity which were intrinsic to his nature.

He is survived by his wife, Ceara, daughter Moya, son Joe, brother Michael and sister Mary. He was predeceased by his sister Paula in 2016.