Denis O’Brien’s cornerman: ‘He must have been a boxer in his former life’

James Morrissey, in the spotlight as he represents Denis O’Brien in the media, tells a story about cutting his teeth in public relations with the help of late actor Peter O’Toole. Morrissey, who was press officer with the Dublin Theatre Festival, had picked O’Toole up at the airport, brought him into the Shelbourne, and asked him if he would talk to a few journalists.

“No f***ing interviews” was O’Toole’s repeated response. Undaunted, Morrissey bought a bottle of good whiskey in the local Quinnsworth, returned and presented O’Toole with the gift.

O’Toole was still adamant, but Morrissey put his foot in the door when the actor tried to slam it in his face.

“Now I know why you were barred from Eileen O’Malley’s bar in Cleggan,” Morrissey told O’Toole. The actor paused, invited him in – and the press officer got his request.

Morrissey had a public profile as a journalist in the 1980s and early 1990s, and subsequently surfaced to represent clients as a public relations consultant. In recent weeks he has taken on the unusual role – for a PR man – of representing one particular client widely in a series of forthright media appearances.

"James must have been a boxer in his former life," is how one ex-colleague describes Morrissey's combative style, reflected in his aggressive approach towards Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin last Sunday during a debate on RTÉ Radio's This Week. At this point, the media blackout over independent TD Catherine Murphy's May 28th statement in the Dáil about Mr O'Brien's banking arrangements was still in place.

"Several times during the interview, Morrissey was wrong-footed on factual issues, but once knocked down he is right back up again," the colleague said, noting that the tack was not dissimilar to that reflected in an article contributed by Mr O'Brien to The Irish Times earlier this week.

Yet when Today FM journalist Matt Cooper asked Morrissey on radio last week about the so-called “Streisand effect” – the backfiring of a $50 million lawsuit by Barbara Streisand to stop publication of aerial photographs of her Malibu home – the public relations consultant seemed nonplussed.

Mad or determined

Morrissey has a long track record in media. “I couldn’t make up my mind whether you were mad or very determined,” one of his first employers told Morrissey when he started out in journalism several years before.

From Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, where his father, a Dubliner, worked with the Department of Social Welfare, Morrissey was sent to Garbally College in Ballinasloe, Co Galway. There he was nurtured in a love of the English language by the late Bishop Joe Cassidy.

He took the scenic route through commerce at University College Dublin and decided to try and ease the financial pressure on his parents back in Mayo. Morrissey had a passion for music, was interested in the showband magazine Spotlight, and felt this was the job for him. However, it took four letters to editor John Coughlan before he got his start.

After his time with Spotlight and the Dublin Theatre Festival, Morrissey moved to newspapers, where his contacts book was the envy of many of his peers. Michael Hand gave him first job in Independent newspapers, where he worked for the Sunday Independent, Evening Herald and Irish Independent. He was deputy to Niall Hanley when the Evening Herald editor lost his life in the Beajoulais air crash of November 1984.

Morrissey was deputy business editor of the Irish Independent in 1989, when he left to found the Sunday Business Post, along with Irish Business editor Frank Fitzgibbon, Irish Press business editor Damien Kiberd, and Business and Finance editor Aileen O'Toole. His boss, Sir Anthony O'Reilly, told him that the "experience he would gain from one year in a new newspaper would be the equivalent of 100 years in an established one". As Morrissey observed afterwards, O'Reilly was right.

Losses and tensions

The new Sunday newspaper was an editorial success, but had difficulties generating sufficient advertising. Heavy losses and tensions within the founding team led to a private emergency meeting with French shareholders in Paris in 1991. A report of the sit-down was leaked to newspapers, precipitating a crisis.

Tensions continued under changed management. So Morrissey left, saying he wanted to pursue a career outside journalism. He issued legal proceedings over his shareholding, claiming “oppression of a minority shareholder”, but said afterwards that this was targeted at the “non-Irish shareholders” rather than his journalistic colleagues.

“James had a reputation then as a phenomenal story-getter, but he was more than just a journalist,”one colleague says. “He tended to like to be in the thick of things, cultivating contacts socially – Fianna Fáil’s Albert Reynolds from his showband days, for instance”

After Reynolds became taoiseach in February 1992, Morrissey worked with him during the Northern peace talks and was appointed by him to the Customs House Docks Authority. He was also appointed a director of Bula Resources.

In mid 1992, he teamed up with Brendan Gilmore, chairman of Arcon International Resources and a financial adviser to Tony O’Reilly through Atlantic Resources. Morrissey, Gilmore and Michael Holland of New City Estates formed a consortium to buy out apartments owned by Irish Life at Mespil flats in Ballsbridge, Dublin, and Morrissey got out his little black book.

Michael Fingleton, then Irish Nationwide managing director, and RTÉ broadcaster Marian Finucane were among those he approached. However, controversy ensued when it emerged that the apartments were being disposed of by Irish Life over the heads of existing tenants, many of them elderly and on pensions.

Flood tribunal

Morrissey moved to Murray Consultants in 1995, and then to Fleishman-Hillard Saunders in 1998; he was appointed a director in 2001. During the Flood tribunal, he represented Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering, one of two building companies accused by former employee James Gogarty of making political donations in return for planning favours.

Developer Bernard McNamara; Chuck Feeney of Atlantic Philanthropies; John McColgan and Moya Doherty; the Quinn family; Aer Rianta; the VHI; and Radio Ireland (now Today FM) have all been on Morrissey’s blue chip client list. He went into business dealings with McNamara and ran into difficulties, which he spoke about in 2012 on radio, describing it as a very tough time.

Morrissey's friendship with O'Brien dates back a quarter of a century, when he was still in the Sunday Business Post. O'Brien appointed him a director of Newstalk radio and asked him to act for him in a professional capacity. Morrissey was "always going to back the winning horse", according to one friend, in the subsequent struggle for ownership of IN&M, his old employer. In 2007 his former patron Tony O'Reilly threatened legal action against Morrissey over a "leaked" media report on IN&M.

The bitterness of that struggle was reflected in a letter that Morrissey wrote in 2012 to IN&M, describing reports in the Sunday Independent as "pernicious journalism at its worst" and a "cocktail designed solely to discredit Mr O'Brien". O'Brien then held a 21.6 per cent share in IN&M.

The letter was leaked to The Irish Times, and former IN&M executive Karl Brophy was asked for comment. In a subsequent court action for wrongful dismissal, Brophy described receiving "bizarre and threatening" text messages from Morrissey, in which he accused Brophy of "telling lies about me". Morrissey has since dismissed the claims that the texts were "threatening".

Morrissey’s main focus in recent years has been as a public relations consultant, spending more time on O’Brien-related projects in the Caribbean. He has maintained a passion for the west coast, which he visited with his parents from childhood, keeps bees at his home in Cleggan, and has written books on Inishbofin and on a history of the Fastnet lighthouse off west Cork.

When Morrissey's most recent book, Inishbofin and Inishark, was published by Crannóg books in 2012, it was launched by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.