Funeral of Jack Fagan to take place in Navan

Death of former Meath minor footballer and Irish Times property editor

The funeral takes place tomorrow (Wednesday) morning in Navan of Jack Fagan, a former Meath minor footballer and local journalist who went on to become property editor of the Irish Times.

In his 85th year, he died peacefully on Sunday at Four Ferns nursing home, Foxrock, Dublin, where he had lived in recent years.

Born in 1939 and a native of McDermott Villas in Navan, he played football with De La Salles and was a member of the Meath team that won the All-Ireland minior title of 1957, beating Armagh by 3-9 to 0-4, playing at right half back. Captained by his Navan team mate, Brendan Cahill, it included his club team mates, Seamus Clynch and Tom Fitzsimons. The previous year, he was a member of the Meath team that claimed victory in the 1956 All-Ireland Vocational Schools championship final against Sligo.

He went onto become a part of the Navan O'Mahonys five-in-a-row teams that won senior championships from 1957-'61.

It was at Navan Vocational School on Railway Street that he learned the skills that would stand to him in journalism, shorthand and note taking, which, combined with his inquiring mind, brought him to the heights of newspaper work.

Beginning his journalistic career in the Meath Chronicle in the late 1950s, he moved to become south Meath correspondent of the Drogheda Independent, based in Trim, covering courts and current affairs in both, and in the 1960s, joined the Irish Times newsroom.

In his early years in the Times, he was dispatched to Cork to cover a major court case, and so exact were his reports, he received a telegram from the Irish Times editor, Douglas Gageby, complimenting his work, a tremendous recognition at the time, recalls his Navan O'Mahonys team mate, former MEP, Jim Fitzsimons.

After his first role on the news desk, he became aviation correspondent, where he charted the fortunes of the fledgling Ryanair among other significant stories of the day. He was deputy news editor before being appointed to the property desk in 1988.

As property editor, he became central to the The Irish Times’s reputation as the flagship source of property-related news, taking to the job “like a duck to water”, according to the former editor Conor Brady in his autobiography 'Up With the Times'.

In September 1988, Jack Fagan oversaw the introduction of Ireland’s first full-colour property supplement.

Although he formally retired at the age of 65 in 2004, he continued in the role of commercial property editor, documenting all aspects of the commercial property sector’s rise, fall and rise again, throughout the economic crash and recovery over the following decade. He retired from the newspaper in January 2019, in his 80th year.

“His ability to make connections was formidable,” recalls former Irish Times property editor, Orna Mulcahy. “The bankers and property people would call him, all wanting to know what he thought, not the other way around.”

He commuted to The Irish Times from period residence, Dunmoe House near Navan, which he first saw on horseback as he rode past with the Meath Foxhounds in the Boyne Valley. He lovingly restored the property with his late wife Eleanor, and the couple reared their children, Zoe, Douglas, and Barry there.

In recent years, he lived in the Four Ferns nursing home in Foxrock, Dublin.

On Monday, Zoe told Tim O'Brien of the Irish Times that her father, even in retirement, remained enthusiastic about the newspaper, his former colleagues and what was happening in the property world.

In his early days, Jack was chief organiser of the annual Meath-Louth Press Ball, run for charity under the auspices of the Louth-Meath branch of the National Union of Journalists, which in the Headfort Arms Hotel, Kells, in 1962 was "very capably organised by an energetic committee led by Mr Jack Fagan (hon secretary)", this newspaper reported.

Predeceased by Eleanor; his brothers, Billy and Harold, and sisters, Jean and Evelyn, Jack is survived by Doug, Zoe and Barry; his son-in-law, John; daughter-in-law, Sinéad; granddaughter, Molly; sister, Eleanor; brothers, Herbert, Ken and Joe; extended family, relatives and friends. His funeral Mass takes place on Wednesday 18th September at 10am in St Mary's Church, Navan, followed by burial in St Mary's Cemetery.