Letter from the Editor
LIKE so many others around the country, we at the Sunday Independent are wondering when we’ ll be back in our office again. Judging by the measures just outlined in the Government’s plan to get Ireland back to work — safely — we’ll be working from home for a while yet.
At Independent House and everywhere else, the vast majority of meeting rooms will be off-limits, even when offices do reopen, due to social distancing requirements.
We have become used to holding our editorial conferences online. On Thursday morning, man-in-the-news Johnny Ronan was one of the big talking points. The previous evening, video footage of him joking about coronavirus in Cape Town had swamped the nation’s WhatsApp accounts. This was mere hours after the announcement that Bewley’s on Grafton Street had closed permanently, with the loss of 110 jobs. An annual rent bill of around €1.4m was cited as a major contributory factor and Ronan, the landlord, was painted in plenty of quarters as the villain of the piece.
The news was all out there on Thursday. For a Sunday paper, the question is always: where we can take the story next. Would Johnny talk? Highly unlikely, it seemed then. But a day is a long time in the newspaper business and you’ ll find Liam Collins’s exclusive interview with the property developer on page 5. Make of it what you will.
Perhaps Ronan decided to explain himself after being filleted by Joe Duffy’s Liveline listeners. Joe has been in the news himself, after some of his audience reared up over explicit scenes on the widely admired Normal People drama series. Niamh Horan gets his take on that — and much more — on the opposite page.
Both interviews address what Duffy describes as the biggest issue he has ever covered — coronavirus. Elsewhere in the paper, we continue our comprehensive coverage of the Covid-19 crisis and the fallout from it.
In Sport, I highly recommend Neil Francis’s riveting piece on the day a 21-year-old Brian O’Driscoll announced himself as the most gifted rugby player Ireland has produced, with an unforgettable hat-trick in Paris 20 years ago.
As ever, we bring you a wide-ranging edition with many perspectives on the big stories of the week. All of us at the Sunday Independent are greatly heartened by the exceptionally strong sales of the paper during this difficult time. We sincerely thank you for your support. Enjoy the paper!
Alan English, Editor