A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The best education isn’t always consumed in the classroom – and, as with everything, sometimes the best lessons in life are learned from your mistakes.

In that context, David Davin-Power was one of my teachers … and at a stage where I might wrongly have thought there wasn’t much more to know.

It takes a rare level of public familiarity to ensure you’re better known by your initials than your actual name, but DDP was there – the only time he was given his full title was when he delivered his nightly wrap-up of the political landscape.

He did that effortlessly; clear, concise, credible; never sensationalist or over-dramatic – just a voice of measured reason, whether the news was good, bad or mundane.

His death last week at the age of just 72 was marked by fitting tributes from across the political divide, and from his old colleagues in RTÉ in particular.

I won’t pretend I knew him well even if our paths crossed – but like everyone else, I felt I knew him better than that because he was such a familiar presence in every Irish living room for so many years.

But on the one occasion we shared the screen, he taught me that lesson I’ve never forgotten – although he wouldn’t have even remembered that he’d ever given it.

It was the run-up to the 2016 General Election which took place that February, and RTÉ’s Six-One News was coming from the Quadrangle of what was then NUIG, focusing that evening on the political permutations in Galway West.

The set-up was familiar; the presenter – in this case Sharon Ní Bheoláin – anchored her section of the bulletin from the Quad, then introduced a package that outlined the candidates and the issues and wrapped that all up with a bit of live analysis.

This involves one of RTÉ’s Political Correspondents and some local journalist – in this case, DDP and me.

And as we stood to one side of the outside broadcast, shooting the breeze on a cold February evening, DDP casually asked how I thought things might go in Galway West.