Don Buckley was a journalist’s journalist. Overcoming odds that would have defeated a lesser person, he developed into one of the finest and most consequential reporters of his day, and served also as a mentor, helping others achieve their personal best.
A hard task master, the standards he expected of them were no less than those he set for himself, and while his bark could be as severe as another man’s bite, it was almost always deployed in getting the story right, trying to serve the reader’s best interests and holding those in positions of power to account.
Don, who died aged 74 on June 9th after a long illness, grew up in Mallow, Co Cork, in a family of three sisters and two brothers. Their father Dan was a cattle dealer; their mother Mary was a tower of strength within the family and became one of the founder members of the Irish Haemophilia Society.
Don’s youthful years were spent learning to cope with the condition - the damage it inflicted on his body and the consequent physical limitations it placed on him which he fought against his entire life. Despite a severely disrupted education, he developed an unquenchable appetite for news, politics and current events, largely through reading newspapers and books, and listening to radio.
And with these interests, came a determination that he would be a journalist
He was accepted into the College of Commerce in Rathmines, Dublin, one of the first places in Ireland to offer third level training in journalism. Graduating, he got into The Irish Times, initially to the features department but gravitated quickly to the newsroom - “where the action was”, as Conor Brady, then a senior journalist and subsequently Editor of the paper, put it.
Don’s métier was always news -the hard edge of current affairs reporting and analysis, where journalists reported the facts and, in so doing, held the powerful to account, while also giving voice to the voiceless. This approach to reporting led to Don’s involvement, with Joe Joyce and Renagh Holohan, in investigating, researching and writing a series of reports in this newspaper in the late 1970s revealing ill-treatment of suspects in Garda custody, by a group of detectives known to their colleagues as the Heavy Gang.
The reports had profound implications for the Garda Siochána, then under severe pressure from politically motivated violence by the Provisional IRA, the INLA and other sundry so-called republicans. Some years later, Buckley and Joyce revealed, this time in the Sunday Independent, the disgraceful treatment of the Hayes family of Co Kerry, by some of the same gardaí.
The Kerry Babies case eventually led to the State repudiating the tribunal report that exonerated the Garda apologising to the Hayes family and paying them compensation.
Don went on to hold numerous senior editorial roles in The Irish Times, in which positions he was an uncompromising guardian of standards and an influential mentor to many. He later started a magazine, Irish Property Buyer, and published a book, the Dictionary of Living Irish Artists.
Don enjoyed music (The Blind Boys of Alabama and Van Morrison were favourites), good friends, of which there were many and with varying interests, and lively, challenging conversation. He liked good food, in high end settings, and enjoyed them most with cherished friends.
He was fortunate in having the doctors, nurses and carers that he had: they made his final two exceptionally difficult years as gentle and comfortable as they could be. Don was an outstanding person in so many ways and he will be sorely missed by those who loved him, and there were many, not least his caring family.
