Irish Examiner view: Speculation and suspicion will live on

Death of Ian Bailey

Even in death, Ian Bailey will continue to create headlines, speculation, and controversy. Just as he did in life. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

Ian Bailey, the British journalist who collapsed and died after a heart attack on a West Cork street on Sunday, was probably Ireland’s best known, or most notorious, ‘blow-in’, a description that might not have disappointed him.

Although he prided himself on being a pizza cook and a poet, Bailey’s role in the decades-long mystery of the killing of 39-year-old Sophie Toscan du Plantier brought him national and international scrutiny.

He had suffered a double heart attack in the past year and said that he hoped he would live long enough to see the assailant of the French mother brought to justice, thereby closing Ireland’s most infamous cold-case file.

Bailey, from Manchester, was twice arrested in the murder investigation of Ms Toscan Du Plantier, who was battered to death outside her holiday home in Toormore, near Schull, Co Cork, just before Christmas 1996. He was a regular attendee at Irish courts, losing a libel case against six newspapers in 2003 and a wrongful-arrest case against the gardaí, minister for justice, and Attorney General in 2015.

Bailey was tried in absentia by a Paris court in 2020, found guilty, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. But on three occasions, Irish judges refused to extradite him. He blamed his cardiac condition and his deteriorating health on the stress of the long association with the murder case.

The events of December 23, 1996, were kept fresh in the public mind by a series of ‘true crime’ depictions, including podcasts, television drama documentaries, and books, plus an almost insatiable appetite for publicity on the part of Bailey himself. 

Hundreds, including Bailey wearing one of his trademark fedoras, turned up at the West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry when a keynote session was chaired by two of his Audible documentarians to ventilate theories about the identity of the killer.

Bailey went to his grave protesting his innocence. That belief is also maintained by the lawyer who represented him when France attempted to extradite him and also in his High Court action against the State.

Ms Toscan du Plantier’s uncle, Jean Pierre Gazeau, urged gardaí to continue their investigation into the man whom the family regard as the prime suspect. They “never had any doubt that Ian Bailey was the killer”, he told this newspaper on Sunday. Even in death, Ian Bailey will continue to create headlines, speculation, and controversy. Just as he did in life.

Covid public inquiry

The Government’s attitude to the establishment of an inquiry into the pandemic can be symbolised by a stanza from the poem ‘Antigonish’: Yesterday, upon the stair/I met a man who wasn’t there/He wasn’t there again today I wish/I wish he’d go away.

One reason for the delay could be the, perhaps laudable, desire to learn from the mistakes of others, and those others, our neighbours, have no shortage: Taking a karaoke machine and a wine fridge into the seat of government at the height of a health crisis, for example, is something to be avoided. But there are lessons to be digested, and actions to be taken, that don’t need to await the results of any formal domestic inquiry.

Nicola Sturgeon, former first minister of Scotland, finds herself at the centre of a row about her use of WhatsApp for conducting government business during lockdown. WhatsApp now forms a crucial, but controversial, component of government communications everywhere. There was anger in the UK when Boris Johnson said he had “lost” 5,000 messages, and embarrassment when Matt Hancock kept all his, with more than 100,000 being leaked into the public domain.

We’ve already had experience of messages going astray, but in a different context that precedes even the antediluvian pledge, made when Micheál Martin was taoiseach in January 2022, to establish a public inquiry. On that occasion, the row was over a potential appointment to the UN and whether exchanges between state office holders and their advisers should form part of the public record and become available under Freedom of Information legislation. It revealed differing practices between ministers over the deletion and retention of records.

It would be tedious if it emerges, when inquiries finally and belatedly get under way, that records of the processes behind governmental decision-making during the pandemic are incomplete. 

We have had a long heads-up on the importance of retaining data. Let us all hope when the time comes for the Irish accounting of covid to be presented that there are no gaps in the system, and that we prove to be rather better at handling mobile comms than the people next door.

Short-haul flight withdrawal

The decision by Aer Lingus to scrap its route from Dublin to London Gatwick says much about the declining market for daily travel, particularly in the business sector, between the Republic and the UK.

Gatwick is a well-served airport south of the capital with good motorway links and a train service which can get you to the centre of the city in 44 minutes.

Until the end of March, Aer Lingus will operate five flights daily and two on Saturdays. Then none. The only route the airline has to Gatwick will cease. Customers booked up to and including March 31 will not be affected.

The company has been flagging potential worries about short haul since last spring when it noted “some decline” in demand on flights related to the tech sector. That London-Gatwick was one of the three most popular routes for passengers travelling through Dublin Airport in Q2 2023 indicates that the fall in bookings has become more steep.