After the headlines, the reflection

Six Irish men and women who made the news in the past 12 months tell ROSITA BOLAND and CIAN TRAYNOR about what their time in the spotlight means now

Richard Baneham

OSCAR-WINNING ANIMATOR

The Dublin-born animator Richard Baneham won Oscar and Bafta awards for best visual effects on James Cameron's Avatarthis year. Previously Baneham had worked on the Lord of the Ringstrilogy and the Chronicles of Narnia.

He spoke by phone from Los Angeles, where he has lived for several years, just before his daily production meeting with Cameron and his team, who are planning the second and third Avatarfilms, scheduled for release in 2014 and 2015.

“Winning the Oscar was an incredibly fun time and a great event to be involved in, but I don’t think it has changed my life much,” he says cheerily.

Four tickets were available for the Oscar awards ceremony, and Baneham’s parents and his wife’s two sisters made the trip to the US from Ireland. The statuette was engraved with his name on the night. So where does he keep it? “It’s on the mantelpiece, along with the one from the Bafta,” he says.

Not long after both awards had been put on display at their home, Richard and his wife, Aishling, went downstairs one morning to discover their two- and four-year-old boys had got their hands on them. “They were playing fighting with them. There was a full-on battle between the two academies, and they were a little the worse for wear as a result. To the kids they were just toys, which is what they are in a way: trophies.”

Baneham had been working on Avatarfor almost five years, so since its release he has been spending time with his family. They also bought a 1930s hacienda, which they have been renovating. In between he has been speaking at film festivals, including one in China. He also gave the keynote speech at the Media Futures conference at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "Once the film was released the commercial viability of it became clear," he says. "There were definitely plenty of job opportunities after the Oscars. Avatarhas set the bar, but there will definitely be more films in the same genre. There are only so many projects out there that really push the bar. There's a lot more gold to be mined."

Baneham hasn’t been back to Ireland since he won his Oscar, but by the time you read this his parents should have received a surprise visit from their son and his family for his mother’s birthday. They will be spending Christmas in Dublin, between his family home in Tallaght and his wife’s home in Inchicore, while his three sons renew their relationships with their cousins. RB

Fintan Lane

GAZA FLOTILLA PROTESTER

It was midnight when Israeli warships began to circle the flotilla. "We could see dark shapes in the distance," says Fintan Lane, who was aboard the passenger ship Challenger 1. "When they moved in it was by Zodiacs: small black boats low in the water. The commandos were in black with masks on. We didn't see them until they were close to the boat. They circled us like hyenas. They kept moving around us to discommode us but to intimidate us as well."

The ship took off at speed alongside Mavi Marmara, a cargo vessel with more than 600 passengers. A helicopter pursued them. Lane heard gunfire. Being the fastest boat, Challenger 1 broke away, causing several Zodiacs to peel off towards Mavi Marmara.

Within half an hour it was clear Challenger 1was on a collision course with a warship. As soon as it slowed the commandos began to board. But the crew impeded their progress by building a blockade, to give journalists on board time to hide footage of what they considered an attack on Mavi Marmara.

Lane was securing the back door just as a stun grenade bounced towards him. The commandos smashed through, sending glass everywhere. Lane and a colleague curled up on the ground to block their path. “One commando grabbed me and put a rifle in my face, shouting that he was going to shoot me if I didn’t move. My feeling was his threat was sincere. I felt he was volatile and that my life was in danger.”

This was not what Lane had envisioned when the flotilla departed from Cyprus. The plan was to break Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza – imposed with the declared aim of keeping arms from Islamist Hamas cadres – by delivering humanitarian aid and construction materials.

Israeli authorities proposed redirecting the flotilla to the port of Ashdod before transferring the cargo pending a security inspection. This offer was declined as, Lane says, Israel was aware that the cargo had been checked and sealed at the ports of departure.

“We were trying to break the siege with goodwill,” he says. “There was no sense of aggression. No one was squaring up for a fight. It was a humanitarian aid convoy. They didn’t need Mossad to investigate the flotilla to understand its ethos. Everything was transparent.”

After being brought to Ashdod, Lane refused to hand over his passport or to comply with deportation officers, and he was detained with many other passengers in Beersheba prison. “We refused to recognise their authority because we felt we had been kidnapped in international waters.”

The prisoners weren’t allowed any contact with the outside world, he says, claiming their release two days later was down to international pressure. He was shocked to hear of the nine deaths on Mavi Marmara; a raid on a ship that size would inevitably cause a melee in the dark and confusion.

Reports of the incident differ. An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council found that the raid violated international law, but the Israeli foreign ministry accused the report of anti-Israel bias, politicisation and extremism.

Once he had been deported to Turkey, Lane attended the funerals of those who had died. “There was sadness there but also a sense of determination to continue,” he says. “We knew some good was going to come from the tragedy, in that Israel had weakened its position regarding the siege of Gaza. I don’t think many left without a heavy feeling in their stomachs, but there was not a sense that it had all been in vain.”

For Lane the solidarity was unshakable from the outset. When Challenger 1was delayed by technical malfunctions, the flotilla waited for it in the Mediterranean, lighting its way through the dark. On the boat they linked arms, refusing to budge. In prison they communicated only by committee.

Another flotilla is planned for March, with as many as 20 ships, but Lane doesn’t want it to distract from the underlying issue. “In a way it’s unfortunate that more attention was paid to the flotilla than what happens to Palestinians. We live in a world where there appears to be a bias towards deaths deemed more important. But what it’s done is mobilise people. That could be a game-changer.”CT

Neil Leyden, Colm MacFhlannachadhaand Cianán Clancy

WINNERS OF YOUR COUNTRY YOUR CALL

Earlier this year Martin McAleese, the President’s husband, launched the Your Country Your Call competition to help provide jobs through innovative projects. It received more than 9,000 entries. Each of the two victorious projects won €100,000, with an additional €500,000 development fund. The winners were Neil Leyden and father and son Colm MacFhlannachadha and Cianán Clancy.

MacFhlannachadha and Clancy’s project is for a “data island strategy”. So what does this mean? “Everything to do with data, we’d like to be number one,” Clancy says. To give an example, he points out that Twitter’s data centre is currently in the US. “We’d see it needing a European centre down the line.”

It was the first time the engineer father and strategy-consultant son had worked together. “I’m a blue-sky thinker. I think outside the box,” says Clancy. “I’m more the practical end of things,” MacFhlannachadha says. Winning was, they say, “a phenomenal opportunity”. Clancy says, “It was the platform for the next generation.”

Leyden, a scriptwriter and animator, hopes to establish a global media hub by making Ireland a centre for producing and distributing content. “A bit like being the clearing house for rights to music, film and TV,” he says.

Since the winners of Your Country Your Call were announced, Ireland has had the IMF come to visit. Will this affect Leyden’s development plan? “The only issue is the reputation of Ireland abroad. We’ve taken a kicking in the area aimed at foreign direct investment,” he says. “It’s startling to see how much innovation is coming out of the US and so little out of Europe. We have to get over our fear of failure.”RB

Aoife Hoey

OLYMPIC BOBSLEIGH PILOT

Ireland’s first women’s bobsleigh team to qualify for the Winter Olympics looked like they would be going home before the competition even started.

Days before the opening ceremony, pilot Aoife Hoey and brakeswoman Claire Bergin were making the final preparations of their four-year qualifying campaign when they noticed something amiss: the Australian team, who hadn’t qualified, had arrived. “We thought, That’s strange. Why are they here?” says Hoey.

Citing a rule that every continent must be represented in an Olympic event wherever possible, Australia proposed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport that they deserved the 20th and final spot, not Ireland.

For Hoey, it wasn’t that her team had amassed 488 points on the World Cup circuit compared with Australia’s 298 that stung. “The most upsetting thing for us was the personal attacks they made,” she says.

“I knew the Australian pilot well, because we both had started to drive around the same time. She was a close friend. We would have helped each other at the track. It was tough to hear her say, ‘We’re better than them,’ when they hadn’t qualified. It was just so unsportsmanlike.”

Coverage of the controversy drew international support for the Irish team, though the spotlight charged the small Olympic camp at Whistler, in British Columbia, with tension.

“We bumped into them regularly in the food hall and the gym, but we decided there would be no confrontation. We just got on with practising and hoped the Olympic officials wouldn’t let us down. I knew in my heart that, if we had to go home, we had still qualified, and we should be happy with everything we did. But for family and friends it would have been devastating. They had come out to see us cross the finishing line.”

When it was agreed that Australia would join the competition as the 21st team, Brazil launched a similar last-minute appeal, threatening further distraction. The death of 21-year-old Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili on the day of the opening ceremony was far more unsettling.

As it was the fastest track Hoey had ever experienced she had spent the night before taking in the luge practice runs, shocked at how quickly they were going. Kumaritashvili had come out of turn 15 late without compensating before turn 16, meaning the track had to be altered for safety reasons shortly before the games were to begin, allowing Hoey’s doubts to fester.

“I was afraid that if they changed it I wouldn’t know what could happen,” she says. “It’s 145km/h – what am I going to do? I was always on edge, always trying to memorise every bend. By the end of the day we were exhausted emotionally and physically from training and the pressure.

“Claire and I would always have a chat at night-time,” says Hoey. “Sometimes we’d say a prayer together. We would use the church in the Olympic village, especially after the athlete was killed. We went to Mass every morning for him and for ourselves. Maybe we were reaching out for something, but it connected us together, and that was really important. There were two of us in the sled, so we had to trust each other. It really was daunting.”

Throughout training their times kept coming down, each one a personal best. They took that momentum into the competition and decided it wasn’t just going to be about beating Australia. “We were standing at the top of the track for the race, and I said to Claire, ‘Don’t hold back. We can prove we were meant to be here.’ And we did.”

Ireland finished 17th, ahead of teams from Britain and Russia that crashed out, making them bobsleighing’s unlikely heroes.

Although Hoey and Bergin were thrilled with the support they received, they left wondering what they could have achieved with more time on the track. When she returned home Hoey also had to have operations to treat some injuries sustained during the qualifying campaign. This only exacerbated the sense of anticlimax.

“It’s hard when you come home,” she says. “There’s a great buzz, but then it starts to fade and there’s a new fad. You almost have to begin a new chapter. But knowledge of the sport grew, and it just shows people that, if you try hard enough, anything is possible.” CT