Jim Dougal:JIM DOUGAL, who has died aged 65, was a respected journalist and former head of the EU Commission office in the United Kingdom. He died at Belfast City Hospital, where he had previously been successfully treated for cancer.
His death has been marked by a broad range of tributes from representatives right across public life in Ireland and beyond. He was well known in London, Brussels and the United States.
Dougal left the civil service for journalism, taking up a position as a general reporter with BBC Northern Ireland and later with UTV in Belfast. In 1974 he moved to RTÉ, where he was appointed northern editor at the age of 29.
For the next 16 years he reported and analysed the very worst of the Troubles, and managed with skill and sensitivity RTÉ’s Belfast office during the most chaotic years. He and his team of reporters covered the aftermath of the collapsed Sunningdale power-sharing agreement, the H Block hunger strikes and the early years of the peace process, while also reporting on many of the most notorious days of violence.
In 1991 he returned to the BBC, as political editor. He used his talents and contacts to report on the key events of the peace process leading to the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires and the first steps towards all-party talks which would lead to the Belfast Agreement.
Always a dapper figure, he co-presented BBC Northern Ireland’s flagship news bulletin for a time in 1996, but returned to reporting after only a few months. He left the BBC to head the Belfast office of the EU Commission in 1997, and was later appointed to lead the commission office in London for the entire UK.
Throughout his journalistic career he was credited for his calmness, his integrity and his personal warmth, which won him the respect and trust of key political leaders and policy-makers. His reports were balanced, fair, incisive, accessible and utterly authoritative. Younger journalists found in him a role model.
At the EU Commission, he also displayed formidable diplomatic skills, although he was at times frustrated by the complexity and bureaucracy of the union’s workings. He resigned and returned to Belfast and journalism in 2004, and founded his own media company, producing a series of programmes on key figures in society, both in politics and beyond.
His illness was borne with dignity, and he continued to work without complaint when he could.
Former SDLP leader John Hume said Dougal “brought great authority and gravitas to all aspects of his work . . . This cemented his reputation as an accomplished broadcaster and won him the respect of his peers in journalism, politics and beyond.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said he was “gifted with great political insight”. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said Dougal’s integrity and professionalism “could never be questioned”. Writer and broadcaster Eamonn Mallie said he was a thorough professional “who was meticulous in his pursuit of the facts”. DUP leader Peter Robinson said Dougal was an “absolute gentleman who was a credit to his profession”.
His death has been marked by leading churchmen, including Dr John Dunlop, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, who offered the reflection at his requiem Mass in Belfast on Monday. Cardinal Seán Brady said: “Jim Dougal personified exemplary standards in journalism and in the public service, and this will be his abiding legacy to all of us.”
Dougal was devoted to his wife, Deirdre, their three daughters and one son, and especially to his young grandchildren.
Jim Dougal: born March 19th, 1945; died October 15th, 2010