Act of contrition
“I am worried, frightened, hopeful, sorry, apologetic, grateful and perhaps if things going forward go according to plan, very lucky.
“I really didn’t think in my darkest days that I would ever be here again.”
“I have asked for forgiveness and I have apologised and I have said sorry every single day for coming crashing into people’s lives uninvited in the manner in which I did and I’ve asked them to forgive me and I’ve asked them to accept my apologies.”
“Paula is a very strong person, she’s a very strong individual. It would be untrue of me to say she didn’t have difficult days; it would be untrue of me to say that it wasn’t tough. It was. She has stood by me and I hope that will be the case going forward and that the event won’t define me for the rest of my life.”
“We [Cork business people and media] had gone to London on that flight, I think it was a Tuesday and it was a day flight so we came back that night. And I think perhaps two days later myself and Paula went on an Aer Lingus flight to Marrakech... and it was while I was there I got a call from Fusion PR, who are the company who organised that press trip to London. I got some of the information from Fusion... A call had been made to Aer Lingus by TV3 so I called Paul Byrne [TV3 news reporter] to say: ‘What’s going on?’ and he gave me some of the detail as to what was supposed to have happened.”
“I just completely panicked you know, you just lose all sense of reason or proportion, your body almost goes into shutdown and you completely panic.
“You make deals and you pray, you promise that if this sorts itself out... you know... this is a career-ending controversy.”
“I wonder did half of me expect this, you know, that the call was going to come, you’re never prepared for it and Eoin English called me, he was really nice about it and I understand that he’s got a job to do as all of the reporters do.
“And I said look, can I call Tim? [Vaughan, Irish Examiner editor]. I know Tim for years and years and years ... I called Tim, and he was very matter of fact... I was grasping at straws... and in fairness he said: ‘Neil you need to talk to Paula, you need to talk to your family, you need to get friends around you and you need to seek legal advice’ and that was it really, so that’s what I did.”
“Journalists have jobs to do... so when you get involved in a story like this you realise the newspapers are going to be interested in it and some are going to be more zealous than others. I will say one thing about the Examiner, they stuck to the story, they didn’t diversify into areas involving my family or my children and for that I’m grateful.
“Other tabloid newspapers did. I find that very upsetting...What I got I deserved 100% but you know I wonder about humanity, and humanity with some tabloids took a back seat here, it got kicked out of the front of the car, publishing my children’s names and ages, you know, they are minors. Going to my children’s school, as happened with my son, is wrong, alluding to fights and bullying is wrong. The schools were never better and on a daily basis were in contact with my wife.
“It took 22 years to build a reputation and it took me seconds to destroy it. I think about that every single waking moment.
“At 49, things are supposed to get easier but now I think regardless of what happens in the coming weeks and months, the hardest time of my life is ahead of me.
“I took all the good things in my life for granted, I took privileges for granted and of course I ended up to some extent thinking perhaps that I lived in a parallel universe.”
“All through my career I’ve had a very precarious relationship with alcohol and I think over the last three, maybe four, years, a lot more precarious. I had lunch with a friend of mine who is a reformed alcoholic just shortly after Gerry Ryan died... and remember thinking it was about time I started to knuckle down and cop myself on and he [my friend] implied I was heading for a major incident and I think in hindsight, this was coming.
“I’m an alcohol abuser, if that makes me an alcoholic... I would hate to think that at some stage in my life that I couldn’t walk into a pub and have a pint.
“I remember in the height of all this, checking the AA website... I think there’s 12 questions and if you tick more than four or five they suggest that maybe you might have a problem with alcohol... and I ticked nine.”
“I had a privileged lifestyle. I took all of that for granted. I can’t say that I was a very good husband. I can’t say that I was a very good work colleague. I can’t say I was a very good friend to people because I wasn’t any of those things when I look back on it.
“I went to counselling. I started with post-traumatic stress counselling and I’ve continued every week to drive to Dublin and, you know, it may not be for everybody and before I ever got into this situation I probably would have scoffed at the idea but, whether the actual counselling works or not, you certainly get time to reflect on your life and your past life.”
“I got sacks of emails and texts and letters. I got holy medals. I got Mass cards. I got so much stuff. I hope at some stage I will have the opportunity to respond to it.”
“Yeah I think I deserved everything I got. I don’t think that in any way shape or form anybody overstepped the mark with me. I’m there, I’m up there. I had a privileged position. I had a privileged job and I blew it and one deserves to pay a price for that. I think that I have been punished enough. Not everybody will agree. It has been suggested in some newspapers that I haven’t been punished and that because there wasn’t a prosecution that I got away with it. Well, you know, you have to define what punishment is. It can come in so many different ways, shapes and forms and I think, over the past five months, I have been well and truly punished.”
“The greatest fear is the fear of fear. You fear every day. Your phone becomes your enemy. The bloody noise it makes when it texts or calls and numbers you don’t recognise and you know that it’s more grief and it’s more hassle and it’s more questions and it’s more darkness to come again. And you have that moment between sleeping and waking. I had it when my mother was dying and my mother died when you wake up and the world is fine and after about two or three seconds this blackness and this darkness descends upon you again, when the realisation of the nightmare you find yourself in descends upon you again.”
“In the first few weeks I just dealt with every day. Just trying to get through the day. We were away at the beginning. We were told it would be best to get out, certainly for the children’s sake.
“Then I went to France. I took a ferry to France because I am not welcome as a passenger on Aer Lingus anymore. I rented a cottage in Provence and I spent some time there. I walked. It was kind of a cold time of the year so there wasn’t a whole lot of pleasure in that really because you are living with your thoughts. And I wrote and I continue to write.”
“Solid. I feel very much ashamed. Oh, for God’s sake, I feel so much shame and so much remorse for all this with regards to my two children but they’re very strong.”
“I think if things pan out going forward, I think I will be very lucky to get my job back. I’ve thought about that a lot actually.
“This is something that I haven’t experienced since the 1980s since I signed on the dole when there was no work. For the first time I wasn’t able to support my family, but there are thousands of people listening now who are in the very same situation.
“I don’t know if this is going to work. I’m willing to give it some months and if it works it works and if it doesn’t, then I’ll go but I think I need to work. I have to be able to support my family.”
“All I can do is apologise and all I can do is ask for a chance. All I can do is look back on my life and realise there are many things in it that I am deeply ashamed of but I hope I will be a better person, that I will be a different person.
“If I get a chance to rebuild my career and, indeed, my life, I will feel very lucky and very humble for that. It was my role over the years and I was paid to deliver figures. I was paid to do it in a manner that would be seen as confrontational.
“People will say: ‘He had the high moral ground for so long’. I don’t know that that’s fair, because I’m a flawed person. I’ve always been as open as I can about my life. In fact many people have told me that I have probably given too much of me on the air. I’ve not held the high moral ground all my career. I don’t think that I have. I’ve gone against the norm. I’ve gone against what many people would accept as being the high moral ground.”
“From a purely selfish point of view, I need to work. I need some form of income to survive and if I don’t have an opportunity to work then I will go under and I think that if I go under, I will go under in every way and I will have to leave. I don’t want to be away from my family.
“I look at things differently now and I had really dark times and I’m not saying I’m not going to have dark times going forward, but I think that the only reason I’m still here or on this planet is because of my children and because I look at them and while on the one hand I think: ‘Oh my God, how could you do this? How could you be so stupid when you were so lucky and you were so graced and so many good things had been given to you on a plate and you blew it’.
“It would be very easy for me just to go. I mean just to leave this world. But my children, I couldn’t think of leaving something I was so proud of. Although as a father I am so ashamed of myself, it’s not what a father should do to find himself in a situation like this with two children. It’s not the legacy you want to give a son. It’s not anything you can be proud about.”
“Perhaps people will say I have money. I have to be honest, I have not. My life has come crashing down around me.
“I was very well paid... I made foolish decisions over the years with regard to property... whatever property I have, is worth an awful lot less than what the bank want me to make repayments on. That’s the reason I say I need to work, because I need to make repayments that are fairly impossible... without a job.
“My wife has been very good over the past five or six months and I’m not ashamed to say that she has been the one that has been really getting on with the day-to-day stuff that perhaps I would have done in the past, because I literally have not money available to me.
“Because of the Boardwalk and everything, I’ve got millions in debt, in that regard, so I need to earn.”
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