An eye on Ireland by Justine McCarthy

For four decades, Justine McCarthy’s fearless journalism and commentary has challenged stereotypes and held power to account as she, in her own words, ‘grew up alongside my country’. The book opens with an extended piece of new writing, in which Justine describes her formative years and entering the male-dominated Irish newspaper culture in the 1980s, a time when a woman getting too many bylines could, and did, lead to a National Union of Journalists bar. From Mary Robinson making history as Ireland’s first female president to a present-day RT? in crisis, over thirty years of stories are collected here. In her long career, Justine broke child sexual abuse scandals and reported from the frontline of the Northern Ireland Troubles; she covered the major reforming referenda, documented political turmoil and charted the role of Ireland on the world stage.