Mary Ellen Synon is no stranger to making headlines. She was in the news most recently when the DPP rejected an attempt to have her charged with incitement to hatred for an article she wrote on Travellers.
She is known for her conservative views in her weekly column in the Sunday Independent, which raised hackles recently on issues such as asylum-seekers and education for the disadvantaged.
However, Miss Synon made the biggest headlines of all in 1995 over her affair with Mr Rupert Pennant Rea, the deputy governor of the Bank of England. The affair will be fondly remembered by sub-editors everywhere for the headline it allowed them to write. The Bank of England was the headline in one newspaper's coverage of the affair, which led to the resignation of Mr Pennant Rea from his £180,000-ayear job.
She said she had decided to reveal the affair after Mr Pennant Rea failed to divorce his third wife. "If you are going to dump, do not dump a financial journalist when you are deputy governor of the Bank of England," she said in an interview with RTE Radio at the time.
Miss Synon (49) is an Irish-American who was raised in Virginia. She came to Dublin in the late 1960s to study fine art at Trinity College, where she first met Mr Pennant Rea, who was also a student.
On graduating she became a freelance journalist and moved to Britain where she worked for the Daily Telegraph. She moved to the Economist in 1987, where her path again crossed with Mr Pennant Rea, the then editor.
She was a regular contributor to the magazine and also wrote articles for The Irish Times as well as the Sunday Business Post and the Sunday Tribune, before becoming a weekly columnist with the Sunday Independent.
Miss Synon angered many journalists before Ms Susan O'Keeffe's appearance in court for not revealing her sources to the beef tribunal. Writing in the Sunday Tribune, Miss Synon said she would be happy to see Ms O'Keeffe in handcuffs.
She is a non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian who is said to be charming company in private but has a public reputation of being an "ice maiden".
She has often featured in the Letters Page of The Irish Times, mostly as the subject of letters, but in 1996 she wrote to point out that Patrick Mayhew's title of distinction was Sir, not Mr, just as hers was Miss, not Ms.
Contacted by The Irish Times yesterday, Miss Synon politely declined to comment on her editor's remarks about her article. She said she would be responding in her next column.
