Don Buckley, former Irish Times journalist, has died aged 74.
A ground-breaking journalist, in the late 1970s he, Renagh Holohan and the late Joe Joyce published an investigation into interrogation methods of a Garda unit known as the “heavy gang”.
Ms Holohan had received a tip-off about the unit’s methods in their investigation of the 1976 Sallins train robbery.
Buckley and Joyce further reported on the “heavy gang” in 1984, when Co Kerry single mother Joanne Hayes falsely confessed to murdering her baby.
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Their report led to the establishment of the Kerry Babies tribunal, and culminated eventually, 36 years later to a State apology to Ms Hayes, for the “appalling hurt and distress caused”.
At Joyce’s funeral last year, former Irish Times assistant editor Peter Murtagh reflected that: “For many years, Don and Joe were inseparable, part of a larger group of Irish Times reporters that included Willy Clingan, Geraldine Kennedy, Jack Fagan and, a little later, myself.”
Born in Mallow, Co Cork, in 1950, Don was one of six children born to Mary (née Nagle) and Dan Buckley.
Buckley studied journalism at the College of Commerce in Rathmines and was “determined” to be a journalist, despite concerns of others about his health, according to his sister Margaret.
For a time he and Joyce worked on Southside, “a really excellent free sheet local paper” where “there was a lot of fun too”, according to Mr Murtagh.
Buckley had haemophilia, but was resolute this would not deter him, and was extremely private about his condition, saying he never wanted to be known as a haemophiliac journalist.
In more recent years, in declining health, and dependent on the assistance of home carers, he fought back against the private provider’s insistence that he only be moved in and out of bed using a hoist.
“The hoist causes me huge pain. I have damaged joints because in the first two decades of my life there really was no treatment for haemophilia,” he told The Irish Times in 2022.
He said throughout his life he had been told, “you won’t be able to do this. You won’t be able to do that. You won’t be able to hold down a job or do anything”.
“I couldn’t accept that. At each turn I have managed to do what they told me I couldn’t. I have maintained that attitude, and that is what is driving me through. I won’t give up on that.”
He is survived by his sisters Margaret, Catherine and Joan and brother David, and predeceased by his brother John.
