Sir, - The recent Gay Byrne Show on RTE with Nell McCafferty in the studio for her birthday interview, enjoined by her family in Derry, must surely be a radio classic of its kind, indeed all kinds, not least for putting the pretensions of TV into a cocked hat by comparison.
What was overlooked however and no one's fault was the benchmark of change for the better Miss McCafferty wrought on Irish life, long before the contraceptive train, with her reports from the Juvenile Court in The Irish Times.
Until then Irish court reporting as practised by myself and others was little more than bringing shorthand notes back to the office and transcribing them for headline writing sub editors. Social scrutiny and reporting at either end of society was unknown vide the recent lament over the "lost" orphans.
Ms McCafferty, whom I have never met, stood back from the court in which she was sitting and with words like acerbic tipped arrows ripping up a pincushion, took in the whole scene from the public gallery to the judge's nose blowing.
A clear picture emerged of an unfeeling institution unchanged since Dickens's time and literature, through which young children were processed with bureaucratic indifference to their fate, often tantamount to cruelty. Yet she rarely if ever used such words.
That Celtic collar for Irish writers would seem inadequate. For reporter McCafferty, some risible icon tilting aside, I nominate a full blown Tipperary silver replica of the Tara Brooch with a child's head at its heart. Yours, etc., (Life Member, The National Union of Journalists), Dukes Grove, Armagh