Eileen Magnier – From RTE reporter to rocking retirement

0:00From GEICO Subconscious News, I'm Tammy Racing Thoughts broadcasting from your brain. Tonight's top worry. If something happens to your apartment and you need to, like, stay in a hotel and pay for it, that would be crazy, right? Art Palpitations has more. That would be crazy, Tammy, but you got surprisingly affordable renter's insurance through GEICO, so it could be covered, giving you peace of mind. Aww, I love a story that ends well. Next up, love stories. Are they all they're cracked up to be? It feels good to worry less. It feels good to GEICO. Coming up on this episode of the Mario Rosenstock podcast.

0:33It was just heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. That night we drove back into Letterkenny in the car and the tears just coming down my face saying there's going to be 10, 11 funerals over the next week. I don't know. Can I face that?

0:56Eileen Magner spent over 35 years as RTE's Northwest correspondent and in that time she covered an incredible number of stories of all different kinds It was, she says, a very fulfilling job that she loved but it was also very demanding and unpredictable in nature It also required Eileen having to report on frankly incredibly tragic stories like the Creaslock explosion in County Donegal in 2022, in which 10 people died. This was a part of the job that Eileen took very seriously, as it's so important to cover these stories sympathetically and accurately, but so painful as well, and with consideration to those left behind.

1:36It's safe to say it takes its toll. And the physical and emotional toll of that work, after over three decades, was starting to become very apparent to Eileen. And so, just over a year ago, she decided to retire. And today, she says she has never felt so healthy, so free and so energized. In this episode, Eileen and I have an interesting chat about her almost four decades at the front lines of public service news. The various factors that prompted her to make that very big decision to retire. And the amazing things that she's been doing since retirement. Warning, this episode might just make you want to pack your job in right now and travel the world.

2:10It's a new vista on the whole world of retirement. You've been warned. My father died at 56. So I remember when I got to 56 saying, every year now is a bonus, you know, and I'm just going to make the most of it. And after my sister Teresa died and my aunt, and they just loved traveling, I said, well, I'm just going to keep going now and go to the places that they would have liked to go and places I want to go myself. Because when you get the chance, and if you're healthy enough, it's sinful not to do it. When I was working, it was so intense at times. You didn't have time to exercise. and John the cameraman I worked with used to say oh we're dashboard dining again so you'd be going off somewhere you'd just grab a sandwich from a garage and a cup of coffee and maybe a bar or something not good for you So you won't find that many people scrolling on Instagram all day on the walk Oh no I hate when you go someplace and people are just on their phones all the time and they're not enjoying the experience what they're doing like concerts or matches or anything like that like you'd be walking down the street here and I don't know how people don't kill themselves walking into polls with their phones.

3:15My full chat with Eileen Magner coming right up. But first, you've probably heard the news that Clare Byrne, it's a bombshell in the world of media. Maybe it doesn't mean that so much to you out there, but it does to us. Clare Byrne is leaving RTE and coming over to this very building, where she spawned from, would you believe it, years ago. Marconi House in Dublin to take over Pat Kenny's slot on News Talk. Big news, not fake news, but very real, very big news. But this has caused major ripples across RTE and other presenters on Radio 1 are all in a tizzy. So when Eileen was spotted walking in the doors of Marconi House to record this podcast interview, it set some serious tongue wagging in a big way.

3:52Hi, you've reached the Mario Rosenstock podcast. Please leave a message. Hi Eileen, it's Miriam O 'Callaghan here. Long time no see. Listen, I've been hanging out a bit in the Hairy Lemon near Marconi House, just keeping an eye on things over there and I saw you going into the building. How did you score that job? Do you mind me asking how much are they paying you? Please get me in, Eileen, please. I need to get out of this hellhole. I'll do it for less than 250. 240 max, okay, I'll do anything. I'll even co-present one of those go-loud podcasts where I talk about doing shots on night out with the girls and stuff.

4:29I'll do anything. Joanne Donnelly might even do it with me if she doesn't bag this presidential gig. Bitch, that was for my gig. How are you? Eileen. Brandon O 'Connor here. Listen, just if you could just, you know, Barry Dunn has been doing the cash call up in Marconi House for a long time now. I think it's time to shake it up a bit. Could you put a word in for me, please, for like maybe a good cork man? I think Barry's a bit hyper, is he? Is he a bit hyper? I mean, the winners need to be brought down to earth a bit, realize that the amount of money can be quite damaging to your life, you know, and may, you know, compromise your relationships and your mental health and all that sort of shite, you know?

5:05And stick in a word for me anyway, right? I'm thinking of society at large here. Eileen, how are you? Sorry, I was cycling around the block there for a few hours and I spotted you going in. It's a few years since I left the AFM there in McHoney House, but I'm pretty sure I left a few bits behind in the kitchen. Some porridge, a piece of dried hake a pouch of spirulina and a pair of cycling shorts. Quite worn around the crotch area. Joke. Like very worn, quite a large hole. Would you take a look for me and let me know if I can collect them? Thanks Thanks, Eileen. Good luck.

6:07October 3rd and 4th sold out in Ennis and continuing into the Gaiety Theatre on 16th, 17th, 18th of October in the Gaiety Theatre and around Ireland. Or you might want to hire me. Maybe you're a huge American multinational and you want to give me loads of money to come down and do a corporate fee. And I do them. I do all of that. And I read all of those, especially the ones which offer me money. Thank you very much. And of course, thank you to our sponsor, deluxebathrooms.ie. Their big blowout sale is now extended to September 7th. Transform your bathroom for less. Upgrading your bathroom doesn't have to be expensive.

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7:19So to the main event, Eileen Magnier, former RTE Northwest correspondent is standing by and ready to report here into the Mario Rosenstock podcast. It was a lovely article in the Irish Independent written by Eileen herself that prompted me to invite her onto the podcast. And so we started there. So Eileen, thanks for being on the podcast. No bother. And great, I read your article a couple of weeks ago in The Independent. And I suppose one of the themes of your article was that life is short and you've got to grasp it while you're young and able and fit, you know. And I was reminding myself in the article of when you started in RTE as a reporter, correspondent and all that.

8:03And it was about 1985. and I remember watching Reeling in the Years the other night right which is permanently on RT Am I on it? No it's not to do with you but it reminded me of the RT your story and it was just the last part of this episode was Mary Black singing As I leave behind Nadine and it's all about emigration and it's all about all these young healthy but disillusioned Irish people getting on an Aer Lingus plane and leaving Ireland. And it was, 1985 was a time when lots and lots of people were leaving Ireland because they had literally no other option. Now things have changed incredibly over the last 40 years but that was when you started.

8:44Yeah, I remember going on the boat. I was working with Pat Kenny at the time and I went over on the boat from Hollyhead and went on the train to London and my own brother and sister at the time had emigrated. They were living around Wilsdon or someplace like that. But I went on the train with the Marantz, the tape recorder, I think it was even the heavier one then. and just interviewed people on the boat and on the train. And it was just so, it was heartbreaking because most of the ones that were on the trains and heading for London didn't have any great educational qualifications. They were all going looking for work in the buildings.

9:15Like emigration now is completely different. But I suppose I felt I was lucky at the time. I had a job. I was able to come back and work here. But as I say, there's four kids in our house and two of them emigrated and went to London at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then you said a lot of them were relatively unskilled. Yeah. Now, in my case, right, I was lucky enough to be able to go to university. Right. So I was in Trinity, but it was in the late 80s. So like at that time, we had this thing called the milk round. Do you remember the milk round? Yeah. A lot of people would. Bottles in the morning.

9:46Well, no, the milk round in relation to college. Oh, no. Did you ever hear of that? So the milk round was this thing, right, where by in 1988, 1989, 1990, these big companies financial companies and economics companies would come over from England especially and they would pick the best of the crop of the Irish you know graduates and they'd offer them this enormous sums of money like£35 ,000 a year nobody had ever heard of£35 ,000 a year to start do you know what I mean and this was called the milk round but it was emblematic of how the best and brightest from Ireland were being hoovered up now of course many times the best and brightest from Ireland are staying here because they can earn very high wages here, you know.

10:28But again, it was that thing. So you had a direct impact. Yeah, absolutely. I was the only one in our house that went to university. So I went to UCD and started working in newspapers and then went into RTE. But as I say, my younger brother and sister, they ended up taking the boat, as we used to say at the time. Yeah. And so you joined RTE around 1985 and you became the Northwestern correspondent after a couple of years? Yeah. It was the end of 89, I was made the Northwest correspondent and Tommy Gorman at the time. Ah, God bless him. Yeah. Tommy went to Brussels and Eamon Lawler was the European correspondent at the time.

11:03He wanted to see would he come home? So the deal was Eamon would come home for nine months. Tommy would go to Brussels for nine months and I'd go to Sligo for nine months and I ended up staying there for over 30 years. Yeah. You know, we all kind of clicked into place and it worked out grand in the end. Yeah, Tommy. Yeah, Tommy. Yeah, I know. Yeah, greatly respected in the journalism. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, taken too soon. Taken too soon. Roy, what about the kids, Roy? What about the kids? I don't know about the kids, Tommy. I don't care about the kids. I want to play for my country. Remember that.

11:36And so what is, first of all, what is the North Western correspondent? What area does that cover? Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim was the core area. But then, you know, you could be pulled anywhere. You could be pulled into the North, down to Galway, Mayo, covering for colleagues if they're off. But that was your core area. And it ended up actually an awful lot of the work was in Donegal. Just everything seemed to be happening. Really? Oh, yeah. Good, bad and whatever. Great people. I used to love going up there. The only thing was the driving. Yeah. Long, long journey. It is. Because when I do gigs in Donegal, it's like four and a half to five hours to get up there.

12:13Yeah. And there's no train out of Donegal. No, there isn't. And they'd be ringing me in the newsroom like in the early days saying, do the story now up in Killybegs and will you be back for lunchtime? And no, it's like 100 miles away. whatever, you know. I know. They just didn't have a concept of how far it was in the state of some of the roads. And just when you talked about covering for Galway there, I remember, I remember, I'm Jim Fahey. Jim Fahey. You know, Jim Fahey, Salt Hill, County Galway. Fantastic colleague, Jim. He was, oh, I loved him. He was brilliant. He was, he worked so hard and he really, he had this whole idea like the community.

12:50We were representing the people and I really liked that idea that the regional correspondent was there to represent the people and reflect what the people were doing. That was our job, I think. And of course, the reason I mentioned really in the years, of course, is because it was such a different time in the sense that journalistically and broadcastingly because of, you know, developments in technology, etc. I mean, back then, of course, you would have had no mobile phones. Oh, I did. You had a mobile. I had a brick. A brick thing? I had the huge brick thing that you'd plug into the car. they called it mobile but you'd be hauling it out of the car and bring it into the house and then plug it back in and I still have the same number except there's a 2 in front of it Go away Was it an 088?

13:35087 It was 088 I think but it's 087 and begins with 2 then 555 Well Like it's gas Yeah No I did Oh I felt chuffed with myself There was I a young one heading off with a mobile phone Yeah yeah yeah And you were working for RTE of course Yeah Was it hard? Is it hard? I mean I mean, you know, can you? Yeah, I was actually the first woman correspondent. Yeah. Which was, it's weird when you look back and think, God. Trailblazer. Yeah, yeah, I know. But I didn't see it that way. I saw it as a great challenge. Like I'm from Kilkenny originally, so I didn't really want to be staying in Dublin. I wanted to get back out down the country.

14:10That's what I liked. But it was tough. There were long days. The technology was way different. Like I started with typewriters. Yeah. Then we did have PCs. that kind of thing. But like if you had to go a distance to do a story, you had to come back to base to edit it. So it may not get out till the next day back in those days. Nowadays, like you're going off and you're editing it all in the laptop and whoosh, if you've got Wi-Fi signal, it's back in Dublin very, very quickly. You know, huge difference. But then there's more demands because of the technological advances because you have to do all the online stuff as well as the TV and the radio.

14:50so you're being pulled all different ways, you know. And what were, tell me some of the big stories that you had to cover during your stint. I suppose in Donegal, we did a lot of tragedy. A lot of tragedy. We had, the first big tragedy, I think, was when the Caricatine sank. It was a fishing vessel that went down off Greencastle. Six men on board, never found. We were up there for a week, I think, and it was just horrendous being in that community. and what they were going through. And then we had that awful car crash up around Bunkranagh. And we've had a few with big numbers like that. I know you're a professional and you have to be a professional.

15:32Does stuff like that affect you? Oh, Lord, yeah. I mean, you'd want to be a stone not to affect you. And I suppose as you got older and as I had children, it would affect you even more. Like I remember after one of the big crashes, having conversations with my children saying, I've covered 10 funerals this week and I don't want to be that mother covering another funeral. Because you're seeing these lovely young people who are going out to enjoy themselves for a night and ending up dead. And it's just horrendous. So it does affect you. Absolutely affects you, you know. And 39 years in RTE? Yeah, near enough.

16:07Yeah, I think it was about that. It was, yeah. Yeah, counting probation and stuff like that. Yeah. And did RTE change in that time, do you think, over those years? Yeah, it did. I mean, there was lots of programme changes as they tried to evolve with programmes. I wasn't involved so much. I wouldn't have been involved in the politics back in Dublin. And I loved the freedom of that. And we had a great band of colleagues in the regions. But things did change for us as well in terms of the technology and the programmes that you were servicing all the time, you know. you want to get me now on something controversial don't you isn't that what you're going for probably yeah yeah yeah well you don't have to give it to me I'll get it out of you some other way I'll do a funny voice if you're something well I don't know if anyone has ever done me have they I'm not so sure no no I'm not so sure I mean we would have done pastiches of people like you from the west the correspondents and stuff like that and Ciarán Malooly was another one was another one and Pascal and Pascal yeah yeah yeah Pascal Yeah, he's great.

17:14Oh, dear, dear, dear. But what I mean by that is, I mean, I'm not really trying to get you to say something controversial, but what I mean is that like, okay, journalism has changed in the last 40 years. All right. So I'm not mentioning any names because I don't have to, right? But I will be often rung by a journalist and they'll go, hey, Mario, can you do me up 2000 words, please, on your favourite Christmas present? And I'm kind of going, sorry, you're asking me to write your article for you and how much am I getting paid for this? And they laugh, nothing of course. So I'm doing your job for you and all this.

17:50So sometimes I get the impression that journalism because maybe it's not as well funded anymore that people aren't willing to spend as much money on reporters on the beach that they're not willing to invest in the infrastructure of your organisation that reporting and journalism has at its worst turned into a kind of a cut and paste thing. Now, at its best, it's still really good. But at its worst, it's kind of a cut and paste and maybe even an avenue for some people to move on to something else. Yeah, I see where I know what you mean. And I saw that when I retired and I did one or two interviews and then I saw bits of them being lifted from here, there and everywhere and put together and given the impression that I had spoken to them, but I hadn't.

18:32And I've seen that with other things. I'm a bit more conscious of it now. But I think I suppose I was lucky. I was working in public service broadcasting. It is funded. We were reasonably well paid and we were all solid journalists with a very strong ethic, I think, that we have to have the truth out there. There was no cut and paste with us, I can tell you. It was all from the horse's mouth. I met an American on a holiday once and he was asking what was I doing and I told him I was a journalist. And he says to me, well, who tells you what to say? And I said, well, what do you mean who tells me what to say?

19:05well someone must tell you what line to take I said no I just tell the truth I couldn't get over it like his concept of media was that there was someone up here and they dictated the slant that everybody took on a story but I that never happened in my career No it didn't but you really raised one of the most interesting subjects of our day and that is I mean hearkening back to what you said there about the American it was interesting that it came from an American because some people would argue that there isn't such a thing really as public broadcasting in America as such. That all broadcasting is commercial.

19:40Now, there is such thing as public broadcasting and very well defined in this part of the world, BBC and RTE and all that sort of stuff. But it does raise an interesting point because when I meant did RTE change, journalism has changed in a way because, again, and I'm not trying to be provocative here and you can deal with this whatever you want, but somebody told me recently, right, they were going on RTE and it wasn't threatened. They weren't threatened or anything, of course, in any way. But they were sort of asked before they went into the interview, listen, don't mention Gaza. Oh, really?

20:11Yeah. Now, this is, I will say that this is anecdotal and perhaps even apocryphal, so I can't prove it. But it sounds to me like something that I would believe. And that is not because the person was being censored. It was because they just didn't want any hassle. Hassle, yeah. Do you understand? Yeah, I understand. And that is a form of censorship because that is a form of chilling. There's a chilling effect of all that. Let us not mention subject X because subject X will attract the ire of organisation, lobby group Y. And we just don't need that. And the way I'm, what I'm saying, Eileen, is that RTE, and this is about specifically RTE and to a certain extent BBC as well, RTE is in a vulnerable position in the last while.

20:58Oh yeah. Do you understand? Yeah. Yeah. So their financial problems have been well documented. And when you are financially vulnerable, you are therefore financially dependent. When you are dependent, you are more likely to kowtow and to or at least to be receptive towards pressure from the people who are responsible for your purse strings. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think there has been a bit of that now. Yeah, I didn't work in the radio programmes, ends of things. I wouldn't be commissioning people to come on programmes or anything like that. But I can see how that could happen.

21:32And of course, when all that business happened, the impact on the rest of us, we kind of felt, oh no, this is terrible. This whole funding thing and all the different controversies and the morale just went down. And it was very hard for people to go out and, you know, be as proud of the organisation as they used to be because, you know, we weren't very happy with what was going on there at all. We weren't happy at all at all. I have to say in the regions, people were very nice to us because they kind of know you one to one and they know, well, she's a decent enough sort. You know, I never personally got any abuse, but I know colleagues in Dublin and on the road did get abuse from people when all that controversy was going on and you can see how it could happen, you know.

22:15And a lot of people would have the impression that all of us were really well paid and milk system and all that kind of thing which wasn't the reality at all certainly at my end of things you know absolutely two different layers completely and don't forget I worked in RTE as well Eileen I was on Glenrow right so I was being paid by RTE one of my time in Glenrow and I remember I used to I was younger and I used to I'd be in McDonald's or something and people would be looking over at me going what's he doing in McDonald's he must be absolutely loaded can you not afford proper food all those RTE heads are loaded I know I know absolutely but we're not absolutely not no the other thing that happened was a news story the Creasloch yeah tell me about again just remind our listeners oh that was I think that was just horrendous it was a Friday afternoon and word started coming through there was something there was a fire and it looked like a petrol station up in Creasloch so I started making a few calls and hit the road fairly quickly because it sounded bad and I drove and it was a long drive Friday evening and I got up there about 8 o 'clock and the place was just oh the scene was horrendous it was starting to get dark and there was sirens and there was ambulances and JCBs and everything all over the place and I would know some of the people up there and we were chatting to some of them and they said it is not good and that night we knew how many people were killed but we couldn't go with it just they couldn't confirm it but we kind of had a very good idea.

23:51This was just horrendous. So we were there. This is part of the respect for your fact checking. Oh, absolutely. So it's not first in, it's get it right rather than be first. Because I mean, you know, there's going to be relations all over the world who will be saying, what's going on in Creasla? And, you know, some people want to get the names out there quickly. I said, I'm not putting out any names until the families all know. And that was always a policy we had. You don't broadcast any names until the families know. and I stuck to my guns on that. I wasn't going anywhere with it. But, you know, as the few days unfolded, you could just see everyone was just in total shock at what was going on.

24:28And, you know, people were working so hard. Like, I remember that night, the sound, like it was totally silent, all these people standing around the street and then there was tractors and trailers going out. You'd hear the sound of them and you'd look and they were just, the trailers filled with rubble because they were pulling the rubble out to try and get the people out. you know it was just heartbreaking absolutely heartbreaking and that night we drove back into Letterkenny to or was it the next night no it was the next night I remember driving back into Letterkenny in the car and the tears just coming down my face saying there's going to be 10-11 funerals over the next week I don't know can I face that but I had to I didn't do one of them I didn't do the first but I did the rest and you kind of just get back into work mode then and say right this is this person who's died their family are all around them their family are heartbroken and you just have to do as respectful a report as you can and give people a sense of what this lovely person was all about you know and then just at the end of the week you go that's over so I think when Kreisla happened I said to myself I've done so many of these things I've covered so many funerals or tragedies that this is just the last one I ever want to have to do.

25:47It bears heavy burden on you. Heavy, heavy, heavy burden. You're just a human being yourself. Yeah, yeah. And it chips away at you. It chips and chips and chips away and you just get sad, you know, and you have to make an effort to get yourself out of that sadness because you're absorbing the sadness of other people, you know. I mean, I don't know, some people can come in, do it and walk away. I found it hard to do that, you know, because I knew I'd be going back up there and I have a relationship with those people like Father John Joe Duffy was just an incredible man and I knew him from other places before and you know, you just have such respect for those people that you just want to, you know, do as good a job as you can.

26:28And I suppose this may have been an earlier indicator that maybe you were going to say I need to wrap it up here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because as I say, you know, a year, a couple of years earlier I'd applied for the redundancy, didn't get it. Then this happened And I thought, you know, this is another, this is a sign, you know. But in between that, my sister and my aunt had died and a couple of my cousins and I kind of was. Your sister and your aunt particularly were close to you. Very, very close. And they died within a few months of each other. And I kind of felt I have to find a way out now because I have to start.

27:01I got into, I kind of went after my aunt died and just after Teresa had died, I suppose you're going, oh, Lord. and I remember feeling very low and saying I decided I need things to look forward to so I set a rule for myself every month I'm going to have something to look forward to just to pick myself up can be a little thing like going to a play or you know going on a day trip somewhere or it can be a big holiday and I just gradually kind of built myself back up and up and up again but you just have to kind of think about the head you know think about the head and recently just yeah I understand and this was the the warning to you that life is short and you must live life and that's what this podcast is actually mainly going to be about now that we've covered all the difficult controversial Eileen Magner years and she sidestepped all the difficult questions perfectly no you didn't we concentrate on the best part of the podcast or the most that's why you're here as well because world is changing life is changing professional life is changing our lifespans are changing our health profile is changing and for example you are 40 years in RTE and I look at you now and you look great and you look so fresh faced and young looking and you don't look like a person who's retired you look like but you have a huge fun retirement ahead of you and this is what I read in the article that you wanted to give yourself things to look forward to and you know you wanted to do all the things that you would like to do So tell me a bit about that.