‘Resignation is a source of sadness to me, but it is unavoidable’

WHEN Siún Ní Raghallaigh was financial controller of Tribune Newspapers – publisher of the Sunday Tribune and Dublin Tribune – in the early 1990s, she had a reputation for forensically analysing invoices and expenses claims. Nothing slipped past her.

Yesterday, the editor at that time, Vincent Browne, was quick to take to Twitter/X to praise her. ‘I worked with Siún Ní Raghallaigh for many years on The Sunday Tribune,’ he wrote. ‘She is a person of integrity and competence, incapable of deliberately misleading anybody. RTÉ needed her and will greatly miss her.’

His was a view widely echoed, because Ms Ní Raghallaigh’s organisational skills, not least in cutting costs and securing value for money, saw her lead some of the key media organisations in the country before becoming the chair of RTÉ.

Her decision to resign in the early hours of yesterday morning, after just 14 months, sent shockwaves through Montrose. Through Leinster House too, because of the no-confidence intervention of Media Minister Catherine Martin, with more fallout expected as the ‘who knew what and when?’ game continues.

It was not always obvious that Ms Ní Raghallaigh would end up on this career path.

Born into a large Irish-speaking family in Dunfanaghy, Co. Donegal, the now 66-year-old started out as a finance manager for Elan, a subsidiary of delivery company DHL, studying certified accountancy at night and qualifying after six years. ‘My feeling on it is that accountancy is a fantastic grounding to have,’ she later told the Irish Times. ‘I never worked as an accountant, but one of the best things I did was slog for six years to do that. It is a great grounding for business. I don’t know how I would get through business without it.’

She moved to the Tribune in 1987. ‘I went to work there because I was a reader,’ she later said. ‘They were amazing people. We pretty much pulled together as a team.

‘There were normal tensions, not to the degree that you think. It was a great place and great journalists came out of there.’

One of her first challenges was the rollercoaster ride of Dublin Tribune, a free newspaper with seven heavily localised free editions, and one paid-for city special. An idea before its time, it suffered losses and closed after a year, and probably would have greatly benefited from the early years of the so-called Celtic Tiger that became a golden age for advertising revenue.

In November 1994, Ms Ní Raghallaigh was on the move again, this time to Telefís na Gaeilge as group financial controller.

She was a key figure in the startup project that began broadcasting almost two years later, and was rebranded TG4 in 1999. She remembered that period fondly in a 2014 interview with the Irish

Times. ‘We had a field in Connemara at the beginning,’ she said. ‘We built it [the new station] within a year and a half. It was an amazing privilege.’

Soon, her role became more central, as she created the business structure for the organisation and established relationships with the independent producers on whom the channel relied for almost all of its programming beyond news and weather. She became director of marketing and development, overseeing the rebranding, before leaving to join Tyrone Productions as managing director in March 1991.

Tyrone, run by husband and wife John McColgan and Moya Doherty, another Donegal woman and herself a former chair of RTÉ also caught in the eye of the current storm, was the creative force behind Riverdance in 1994.

It became a significant independent producer, responsible for shows such as TG4’s long-running Irish language soap opera, Ros na Rún, as well Dr Eva’s Great Escape with Eva Orsmond, The Daniel O’Donnell Show, Seoige & O’Shea, and the Gabriel Byrne criminal pathology drama, Quirke, based on John Banville’s novels written under his Benjamin Black pseudonym.

From 2005 to early 2012, she worked as chief executive of Tunepresto, a technology company she co-founded that allowed people create their own royalty-free music to accompany video and slideshows.

A bigger project was waiting in the wings though. After some busy years as home to television series The Tudors and Camelot, Ardmore Studios in Bray, Co. Wicklow, went into a slump that almost caused its demise, and Ms Ní Raghallaigh was hired to turn its fortunes round.

Created by director and writer Sam Mendes and John Logan, who also teamed up for the James Bond film Skyfall, the Victorian gothic series Penny Dreadful could not find studio space in England, and Ms Ní Raghallaigh enticed it to Ardmore.

Her first role, she told the Irish Times, had been to ‘cut hard and deep’. Fifteen staff were chopped down to four, two of them security guards. By 2014, though, the glamour was back, and Penny Dreadful’s 27 episodes over three series saw almost €100million injected into the Irish economy. A parade of star names made its way to Bray, including former Bond

Timothy Dalton, former Bond romantic interest Eva Green, Billie Piper, the late Helen McCrory of Peaky Blinders fame, and Broadway legend Patti LuPone.

So successful did the industry here become, thanks to shows such as Vikings and films such as Disenchanted, Cocaine Bear and many more, and the insatiable desire of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Prime for new product, that even Ardmore could no longer cope.

In Limerick, the former Dell computer plant was repurposed as Troy Studios by Joe Devine’s Olcott Entertainment, which in turn bought Ardmore Studios, at which point Ms Ní Raghallaigh gained a stake in the business.

It was sold to a US investment firm in 2021 for an estimated €85million.

As well as these jobs, Ms Ní Raghallaigh was, from 2003 to 2022, managing director of production company Ikandi and, from 2012 to 2022, cathaoirleach of her old project, TG4.

No sooner had Ms Ní Raghallaigh got her feet under her desk in Montrose, the RTÉ payments scandal broke, first with details of top-up payments to Ryan Tubridy, then with barter accounts used

‘She is a person of integrity and competence. RTÉ needed her’ ‘I believe in the importance of public service media’

by RTÉ to fund lavish client entertainment. The losses incurred by Toy Show The Musical came under scrutiny, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was the controversy over redundancy payments to former executives, who sanctioned them, and whether or not the minister was told.

In her resignation statement, Siún Ní Raghallaigh said: ‘I applied for the role of chair of RTÉ because I believe strongly in the importance of public service media… Serving is a privilege which requires the confidence of the minister. It is abundantly clear that I no longer do. My resignation is a source of sadness to me, but it is unavoidable.’

These events may bring a stellar media career to an end, but it would be no surprise to see Siún Ní Raghallaigh’s experience and skills in demand elsewhere, even in an advisory capacity. This episode of RTÉ’s most riveting drama ever might be over, but the series has a long way to run.