MINISTER CONGRATULATES NORTHERN STANDARD JOURNALIST ON RETIREMENT
After more than seven years working as a reporter for The Northern Standard, Tydavnetbased Michael Fisher has announced his retirement from the paper. He has been covering the Ballybay/Clones Municipal District since his appointment to the staff in 2018. Previously Michael worked for the Standard as a freelance and spent some time covering the Carrickmacross/Castleblayney area.
He has also reported on the Monaghan Municipal District area. Although he has reported expertly and with insight on a wide range of stories, Michael has perhaps been mostly closely identified during his time with the Standard with reportage on Eir- Grid’s controversial plans for the North South electricity interconnector, writing extensively on the subject and publishing details of dozens of emails showing the connections between the grid operator and the Department of Communications in a series known as The EirGrid Files.
His work was referenced in the Dáil and Seanad by some Oireachtas members. He was the only reporter to attend all five weeks of the public enquiry held by An Bord Pleanála in Carrickmacross in 2016. The inspectors granted approval for the overhead line in a decision revealed just before Christmas (when this newspaper had already published its last edition of the year and everyone was concentrating on the holiday break). During the pandemic, Michael won a national award from the Guild of Agricultural Journalists in December 2020 for his reporting on Covid-19 which featured extensively on our front pages over two years.
Michael began reporting for the paper in January 2015 and in the first fortnight a major story broke with the closure of the BOSE factory in Carrickmacross, which he covered with photographer Pat Byrne. Working with Pat, he made a video on “What’s next for Carrickmacross?” about the long-running ground rents issue that affected one side of the Main Street in the ownership of the Shirley estate. It centred around the legal battle pursued against the landlord over twenty years by one local businessman, supermarket owner Gus O’- Gorman. The initiative eventually led to cross-party cooperation in passing new legislation on ground rents that was announced by Minister Heather Humphreys in December 2019. (see 19th December 2019 https://northernstandard.ie/2019/12/19/majorchristmas- present-for-carrickmacross )
The past year has been a busy one for Michael as he is President of Monaghan Lions Club, raising funds for local charities. He recently took part in the ‘Climb with Charlie’ event set up by his former RTÉ News colleague Charlie Bird to help the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association and Pieta, for which he is also raising funds next month in the ‘Darkness into Light’ walk.
Michael worked for over 30 years with RTÉ News mainly as a correspondent in Belfast covering the troubles in the North. He is a contributor to the recently published Reporting The Troubles 2, in which journalists their stories of reporting on the conflict. He now intends to do more travelling. He is a Fáilte Ireland qualified regional tour guide, with a particular interest in local history.
Michael said this week that he would like to thank all those who have contributed in any way to his articles for the paper. Speaking at the end of a recent engagement in Ballybay, Minister for Rural and Community Development Heather Humphreys said Michael had kept everyone up to speed with what was happening in Co Monaghan. She thanked him for his commitment and the contribution he had made to reporting events. “We’re going to miss you!” she added…
