Siún Ní Raghallaigh profile: A new chair for a new RTÉ?

When Siún Ní Raghallaigh appears before the Oireachtas media committee today – marking her first public outing in her capacity as RTÉ chairwoman – she will speak of “expensive” but necessary technological change and a “real risk of cultural dilution” amid competition from “global giants with deep pockets”.

Blending seamlessly in with such “realities” and the call for swift reform of the TV licence fee, she will sound a hopeful note: there is, she says, “a significant moment of opportunity” now “for the reimagining of a new RTÉ”.

With the Government forecasting a €16 billion surplus next year, now would seem the best time in a long time for public funding to assist with such a reimagining – that surplus, incidentally, is roughly the amount Netflix spends annually on content.

Ní Raghallaigh’s opening remarks to the Oireachtas committee will represent only her second public statement since being appointed chair of RTÉ five months ago. The first arrived on Tuesday after the confirmation of former RTÉ news boss Kevin Bakhurst as the broadcaster’s next director general following a selection process more protracted than she would have liked.

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Indeed, Ní Raghallaigh’s silence to date reflects the extent to which the recruitment of a successor to Dee Forbes has weighed down her in-tray since becoming Cathaoirleach, as the TG4 veteran also describes her RTÉ role on her LinkedIn profile.

She has not yet addressed any mass gatherings at Montrose either – a product, perhaps, of wanting to wait to team up with the new director general to show a united front and map out what that “new RTÉ” might look like in practice.

Within RTÉ's 1,800-strong workforce, some will have seen ominous implications in the tea-leaf words “time of opportunity and change” as she welcomed Bakhurst. The new(ish) chairwoman’s CV suggests she will have a sharp eye for potential cuts.

Ní Raghallaigh (65) is the director general that RTÉ never had. She is still best known for her association with TG4, serving as its chairwoman for two five-year terms from 2012 until April 2022, while she was also one of the founding members of Teilifís na Gaeilge (TnaG), as the Irish language broadcaster was originally known.

From Dunfanaghy in Co Donegal, she began her career as a finance manager for Elan, a subsidiary of delivery company DHL, and studied certified accountancy at night, qualifying after six years and describing it as “fantastic grounding” for her business career.

She entered the media industry by becoming the group financial controller of Sunday Tribune at a time when the newspaper was a stand-alone entity, then in the 1990s, she moved to Galway and helped start TnaG from scratch.

“We had a field in Connemara at the beginning. We built it within a year and a half. It was an amazing privilege,” she told The Irish Times in 2014.

After leaving what had by then become TG4 in 2001, Ní Raghallaigh served as chief executive of Tyrone Productions, the production company co-owned by Moya Doherty, who she succeeded as RTÉ chair.

There is a parallel between the two women beyond the fact they both originally hail from Donegal – both spent stretches of their careers in the employ of public service broadcasters, then parlayed this experience into creative sector entrepreneurialism.

In Ní Raghallaigh’s case, this involved reviving the fortunes of Ireland’s first major film studio – Ardmore in Bray – after it almost collapsed in 2012, then securing the investment of Joe Devine’s Olcott Entertainment to create Troy Studios out of the wreckage of the deserted Dell complex on a Limerick industrial estate. Olcott later took over Ardmore.

“I think it was no secret that I had been voicing quite loudly that we need more infrastructure,” she said of Troy in 2018. “And it wasn’t only me. There were oodles of reports saying the same thing. But the problem with Ireland is that lots of people talk about things but you have to go and do things.”

At the time of Ardmore and Troy’s estimated $100 million (€85 million) sale to Hackman Capital Partners, its studio operator affiliate MBS Group and Square Mile Capital Partners in 2021, Ní Raghallaigh had a stake in the business.

These days, her Twitter profile biography simply reads “enjoying life”. She won’t, however, have enjoyed the breakdown in board discipline that saw leaks emerge from RTÉ's Good Friday board meeting, at which the director general appointment was effectively stalled by internal dissent.

Ní Raghallaigh will hope that her pointed reference to Bakhurst being the “unanimous choice” of the RTÉ board will help draw a line under reports of these bad vibes, though she will undoubtedly be questioned about the affair at today’s Oireachtas committee hearing.

Notwithstanding the embarrassment, Ní Raghallaigh will be pleased to get her man in the door. Her own track record of overseeing a publisher-broadcaster such as TG4 – which commissions all the programmes its airs – plus her knowledge of how to build studio operations from the ground up suggests she will be capable of implementing more radical changes at RTÉ, should they be required.

“There are significant strategic choices ahead as we continue to consider how to better serve audiences, within financial constraints,” she will tell the committee. That is less of a spoiler and more what is known in the trade as a teaser.