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Tag Archives: Cathal Goan


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Birth of Ciarán Mac Mathúna, Broadcaster & Music Collector

Ciarán Mac Mathúna, broadcaster and music collector, is born on November 26, 1925, in Limerick, County Limerick. He is a recognised authority on Irish traditional music and lectures extensively on the subject. He travels around Ireland, England, Scotland and the United States collecting music.

According to Sam Smyth in the Irish Independent, Mac Mathúna is “on a mission to collect songs and stories, music, poetry and dance before they were buried under the coming tsunami of pop music.”

Mac Mathúna presents the radio programme, Mo Cheol Thú, for 35 years. Upon his retirement in 2005, the managing director of RTÉ Radio, Adrian Moynes, describes him as “inseparable from RTÉ Radio.” Upon his death in 2009, the Irish Independent describes him as “a national treasure.”

Mac Mathúna spends his early years in Mulgrave Street in Limerick. He is schooled at CBS Sexton Street, and later graduates from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA in modern Irish and Latin. Subsequently, he completes an MA in Irish.

After college Mac Mathúna works as a teacher and later at the Placenames Commission. In 1954, he joins Radio Éireann where his job is to record Irish traditional musicians playing in their own locales. This entails visiting such places as Sliabh Luachra, County Clare and County Sligo, and the resulting recordings feature in his radio programmes: Ceolta Tire, A Job of Journeywork and Humours of Donnybrook.

Director General of RTÉ Cathal Goan later recalls that Mac Mathúna interviewed him for his first job at the station. He assists in the organisation of Mac Mathúna’s music collection for the RTÉ Libraries and Archives.

Mac Mathúna’s long-running Sunday morning radio series, Mo Cheol Thú (You are my music), begins in 1970 and continues until November 2005, when he retires from broadcasting. Each 45-minute programme offers a miscellany of archive music, poetry and folklore, mainly of Irish origin. It is one of radio’s longest running programmes. The last episode is broadcast on November 27, 2005, at 8:10 a.m.

Mac Mathúna wins two Jacob’s Awards, in 1969 and 1990, for his RTÉ Radio programmes promoting Irish traditional music. He receives the Freedom of Limerick city in June 2004. He is also awarded honorary doctorates by NUI Galway and the University of Limerick. In 2007, he receives the Musicians Award at the 10th annual TG4 Traditional Music Awards.

Joe Kennedy in the Sunday Independent in 2007 compares Mac Mathúna to “an amiable rock, rolling gently along, still picking up some moss and morsels of music that he may have missed.”

Mac Mathúna‘s wife, Dolly MacMahon (using the English version of her surname), is a singer of traditional songs. She comes from Galway and meets her husband in 1955. He has two sons named Padraic and Ciarán, one daughter named Déirdre, and four grandchildren at the time of his death: Eoin, Colm, Conor and Liam.

Mac Mathúna dies in St. Gladys nursing home, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, on December 11, 2009. His funeral on December 15, 2009, is attended by hundreds of people, including aides-de-camp of the President and Taoiseach, RTÉ Director-General Cathal Goan, poet Seamus Heaney and others.

Musicians performing at the ceremony include Peadar Ó Riada, Cór Cúil Aodha and members of The Chieftains and Planxty. The corpse is then taken to Mount Jerome Crematorium. Journalist Kevin Myers says Mac Mathúna’s legacy will be the “rebirth of Irish music,” adding, “Well, if Ciarán Mac Mathúna can die, I suppose anyone can. Actually, I had always thought that he was immortal. He certainly appeared to have all the ingredients.”


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Birth of Cathal Goan, Former Director-General of RTÉ

Cathal Séamus Goan, Director-General of RTÉ from 2003 to 2011, is born on May 5, 1954, in Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He also plays a leading role in the launch of TG4.

Goan is an Irish language speaker. He studies Celtic studies at University College Dublin (UCD). He joins RTÉ in 1979 as an archivist with RTÉ Radio. He becomes a producer and senior producer on RTÉ Radio. In 1988, he moves to RTÉ Television and works on Today Tonight. Remaining in current affairs, he becomes editor of Cúrsaí, an Irish language television programme about arts and current affairs. He becomes Editor of Irish Language Programming in 1990.

Four years after being appointed Editor, Goan is approached to become “Ceannasaí” of the new Teilifís na Gaeilge. From August 1994, he manages the commencement of the new television channel. After a successful launch of the channel, where award-winning programming is produced during his tenure, he returns to RTÉ in 2000. He is appointed Director of Television and becomes a member of the RTÉ Executive Board.

Bob Collins retires as Director-General of RTÉ in 2003 to pursue a career elsewhere. It is announced in July 2003 that Goan will fill this position. He becomes the Director-General in October 2003. In 2008, he has a salary of €280,000, but it is reduced by €35,000. In 2006, he is announced as member of the board of National Concert Hall and serves there until May 2011. After the broadcast of a news item on nude pictures of Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Minister Michael Kennedy calls for Goan to “consider his position” as Director-General of RTÉ. He also receives criticism from Minister Éamon Ó Cuív in February 2010, when Sunday Mass is reduced to being broadcast just once a month on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta.

Goan announces in July 2010 that he intends to step down at the end of his seven-year term. His resignation is accepted by the RTÉ Board.

Goan is married to Irish singer Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill.


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Birth of RTÉ Broadcaster Joe Duffy

Joseph Duffy, Irish broadcaster employed by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), is born in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, on January 27, 1956. One of RTÉ’s highest-earning stars, he is the current presenter of Liveline, an interview and phone-in chat show broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1.

Duffy is brought up in Ballyfermot, one of five siblings. His father is Jimmy and his mother Mabel. His father, who has problems with alcohol, dies aged 58 in 1984. His 25-year-old brother Aidan is killed in a road accident on the Maynooth Road in 1991, with Duffy first learning of the “horrific accident” on the news on RTÉ Radio. His brother Brendan is described by him as “crippled, ruined and wrecked by a savage addiction” to sniffing glue which he develops as a teenager.

Duffy attends De La Salle Boys’ primary school, St. Lorcan’s B.N.S and St. John’s De La Salle College. He enrolls at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) in 1977 to study Social Work and is elected President of Trinity College Students’ Union in 1979, becoming President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) four years later.

Duffy considers resigning from RTÉ in 2007 after the broadcaster forces him to give Minister for Justice Michael McDowell a platform on Liveline to make a “party political broadcast.” He considers it “direct party-political interference” in Liveline. However, he goes ahead with the broadcast and does not resign or make any protest on air.

In October 2008, Duffy is proactive as a supporter of Irish pensioners who march on Leinster House to protest at the proposed means testing of their medical cards in the Government Budget. However, earlier that month, he is reportedly censored by the government when he attempts to continually discuss the effects of the global financial crisis in Ireland. This follows on from the outrage caused when he is held responsible by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan Jnr for inciting widespread public fear that Irish citizens are on the verge of losing their savings. Several callers freely speak of their lack of confidence in the banking system, of how they have withdrawn their money from banks, some of which are identified, and are either carrying it around on their person, or considering keeping it “under the mattress,” or burying it in their garden. Lenihan personally calls Cathal Goan, the Director-General of RTÉ, to express his outrage at the sudden increase in potentially disastrous speculation following the show.

The extent of the Finance Minister’s concern first publicly emerges the following morning when he is interviewed by RTÉ’s economics editor George Lee. In that interview, Lenihan insists that deposits are not in any danger and says that people should not be going to banks to shift their deposit accounts “on the basis of unfounded allegations made on radio programmes.”

Rival broadcaster TV3 accuses Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and Duffy of waging a “dirty tricks” war against them after a late-night game show run by TV3 is berated by callers to Liveline and saying several times on air that he has been unable to get a representative from the station to reply to callers’ concerns. TV3 says a lengthy statement is sent to the Liveline office almost two hours before the September 2009 show goes on air but is ignored, despite the fact that it clarifies some of the issues. The Play TV service is discontinued by TV3 in March 2010 after 29 complaints to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), though TV3 says it is because of a decline in viewership.

Duffy is famous for taking up the causes of the disadvantaged on Liveline, and examples of this include Berry Fleming who lost her job in 2010, and Aubrey McCarthy, who is trying desperately to get his removal business off the ground in 2012/2013.

Duffy is frequently lampooned at length on the satirical TV programme The Savage Eye. It portrays him as a fetish garment clad sado-masochist who derives perverse pleasure by urging his call-in radio listeners in a strong working-class Dublin accent, to express excesses of degradation and misery as he “empathizes” verbally and plays with his nipple clamps. He has since questioned viewership figures for The Savage Eye on his daily radio show and has questioned whether it is “blasphemous” on his Sunday afternoon religious affairs TV show Spirit Level.

Duffy is married and is the father of triplets. He currently resides on Dublin’s Northside. His autobiography, Just Joe, is launched by Gay Byrne in Harry’s Bar in October 2011. In 2014, he makes a cameo in Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie as himself. The film is negatively received but is a moderate box office success.

In 1992, Duffy wins a Jacob’s Award for his reports on RTÉ Radio 1’s The Gay Byrne Show. He is named 11th most influential person of 2009 by Village.