Letters to the Editor: Charlie Bird’s professional impact

One reader writes that the late Charlie Bird 'had charisma and helped us to pay attention to important news'

RTÉ presenter and correspondent Charlie Bird died last week, having lived with Motor Neuron Disease for the past number of years.

I remember Charlie Bird interviewing Fr Niall O’Brien through prison bars in the Philippines in 1984.

Fr Niall, along with two priests (a Filipino and an Australian), and six lay workers had been arrested on a false charge of murder of a mayor. Fr Niall was a community and human rights activist and he told of their innocence and that they had been arrested on a trumped-up charge because their work brought them in contact with the poor who they had taught to stand up for their rights in a non-violent way.