10/10/2026
What keeps broadcaster Gavan Reilly awake at night?
'My family history of heart disease,' he says, 'and the fact that I need to overcome it in order to care for our daughter, who is profoundly autistic and has significant intellectual disabilities and who won’t ever be able to mind herself.'
'We have no reason to believe that she will be anywhere else other than with us for her life, so we need to keep ourselves going for as long as possible to care for her for as long as possible because, as it’s been documented in the news of late, there isn’t really much else that you can rely or depend on.'
'So it’s making sure that I’m around to care for her for as long as I can manage it. I was very conscious of when I started talking about it [publicly], because, especially in my line of work, once you start talking about your own circumstances, you can be typecast. I need to be able to go on TV and talk about the budget or a Donald Trump visit and not have people thinking in the back of their mind, 'There’s the guy always banging on about his kid.''
And what's the first thing he'd do if he was made Taoiseach? 'Aggressively increase the number of college spaces for speech and language and occupational therapists. There will always be a shortcoming of space or provision. The only silver bullet is to train thousands more of them'
