First woman to lead RTÉ's news and current affairs division named Cork Person of the Month
Deirdre McCarthy, who was appointed to the position in December 2022, is originally from Douglas. She was educated at UCC, where she was conferred with a BA in history and economics. She also holds an MA in politics from UCD, and a postgraduate diploma in conflict and dispute resolution from Trinity.
Flagship shows including Morning Ireland, the Six One News and Prime Time are now under her remit. She forms part of the senior management team at RTÉ and sits on its executive board.
Across her three decades in RTÉ, Ms McCarthy has been a TV and radio journalist, she has been managing editor of regions and radio news programmes, as well as politics and business coverage, and she has steered the growth of radio news programmes like Morning Ireland, News at One and This Week.
She was RTÉ's political coverage editor at Leinster House, and from 2008 to 2012, she was the editor of The Week in Politics and Leaders' Questions.
Cork Person of the Year organisers said throughout her time at RTÉ, she has consistently demonstrated a keen understanding of the evolving media landscape and a strong commitment to journalistic integrity, and that current affairs output.
'Deirdre is an active champion of initiatives promoting media literacy and fostering informed public discourse,' they said.
'Her commitment to fair and balanced reporting has been a hallmark of her career, ensuring that diverse voices are heard and critical issues are examined with rigour and accuracy.
'This is epitomised in her work launching RTÉ's Clarity initiative, which aims to demystify complicated issues, debunk deliberate attempts to distort reality, detail how online discourse impacts democracy, and explain exactly how RTÉ verifies its quality journalism.'
Awards founder and organiser Manus O'Callaghan said Ms McCarthy's most recent appointment was a tremendous achievement, honour and responsibility.
'In a world where 'fake news' has entered the lexicon, trust in who supplies our news is all important, and RTÉ News under Deirdre's guidance tops all the surveys which measures trust in media organisations,' he said.
Her name now goes forward for consideration alongside the other monthly winners for Cork Person of the Year which will be announced at the awards lunch next January.
Read More
Shocks from Spanish earthquake felt in Mitchelstown Cave
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
15 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Watch: Questions remain over US tariff exemptions
Questions remain over which areas are exempt from US tariffs on EU goods, RTÉ's Economics and Public Affairs Editor David Murphy has said. Speaking on RTÉ's One News programme, Mr Murphy said there is an awful lot of trade in terms of wine and spirits between the EU and the US and there was talk that those imports could be exempt from tariffs. However, any exemption for these products remains uncertain. In relation to pharmaceuticals, Mr Murphy said the US investigations into pharmaceuticals and semiconductors will need to play out before there is certainty surrounding tariffs on those products. "Thereafter, there is an expectation that there would be a tariff with a ceiling on that of 15%," he said regarding possible future tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. However, Mr Murphy stressed that the EU deal with the US was better than some others with Canada hit with 35% tariffs, India subject to a 25% rate and tariffs of 39% placed on Swiss imports to the US. Today had been set as the deadline for reaching a trade deal with the US, but following a breakthrough in talks last Sunday, an agreement was reached on a 15% levy on most EU exports to the US, expected to take effect on 7 August.
Irish Independent
16 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Government could generate up to €118m in tax revenue by setting targets for remote job creation, advocate says
It comes as AIB last week announced that its workers must return to the office for a minimum of three days per week from January 2026 in a reversal of its Covid-era policy for non-customer-facing staff. According to Tracy Keogh, co-founder of remote working advocacy group Grow Remote, approximately 100,000 remote jobs are made available across the European Union each month. Ms Keogh said the Irish Government could benefit from a substantial increase in tax revenue if it proactively embraced the work-from-home model in its workforce. "People probably won't know that there's 100,000 remote jobs open across the European Union every month,' she told RTÉ's Morning Ireland. 'If we set a target to win five per cent of those, that's 5,000 jobs.' She added that, if we take the average salary of a remote job at €60,000, this would represent a significant amount of tax generated by Revenue. 'That would be 48 million in taxpayer income per year.' She argues that the establishment of a national target by a pro-remote working government will not just benefit the country in terms of collected revenue, but it would also protect isolated areas of the workforce in the event of a company exodus. "If one [foreign direct investor] pulls out of a rural or regional place, we have left that town stranded. If we have remote jobs coming into the market, that's 118 million from the taxpayer.' Ms Keogh pointed to fintech firm Revolut's recent announcement of 200 remote jobs in Europe for which anybody living in Europe can compete for. "We need a national target to land those jobs into Ireland.' The prospect of businesses mandating a return to the office could see an inevitable worker exodus to remote jobs based on the Continent in search of more flexible working conditions. "In terms of AIB and any other company who since Covid, has decided to pull people back in who were working brilliantly remotely [...] have access to those 100,000 jobs that are available on the market. Ms Keogh acknowledges pushback from employers on the issue, particularly in the realm of employee productivity. This doesn't need to be one silver bullet for every person and company across Ireland. However, she is urging them not to see the advent of remote work as a threat to profitability. "If an employer doesn't want to embrace remote, they don't need to embrace remote. "This doesn't need to be one silver bullet for every person and company across Ireland.' Addressing fears that a growth in remote jobs could result in remote employers competing with office-based employers for workers, Ms Keogh says there should be no in-between. "You should have people who are working in companies, or want remote jobs, working in remote companies. "Then for those companies like AIB, where they have branch staff who have to be on site and present, they will have that tension, and that probably was a factor in how they came to the decision to ask people to come back into the office.'
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Politicians want to ‘look tough' on crime, but locking people up in dysfunctional prisons is not the answer
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System, commonly known as the Whitaker Report. It was the most comprehensive investigation ever conducted into Ireland's prisons . However, unlike earlier anniversaries, there are no reflective events marking this one, no looking back to explore lessons learned. This is regrettable as the malaise in Irish prisons Whitaker identified is far worse now than 40 years ago. The report saw Ireland's propensity to send people to prison as excessive, but the rate of incarceration today is more than twice what it was in 1985. READ MORE The Whitaker Report was critical of prison conditions then, saying: 'The triple depressant of overcrowding, idleness and squalor ... dominates most Irish prisons'. All these aspects are worse today. In a recent interview on RTÉ's This Week programme, the Inspector of Prisons, Mark Kelly, used the words 'inhuman', 'degrading' and 'deplorable' to describe life in Irish prisons and noted that 'in some instances conditions can be said to be life-threatening'. He spoke of people 'crammed into cells which were designed for one person', many 'sleeping on thin rubber-coated mattresses on the floor ... their head next to an unpartitioned toilet'. The Inspector said the 'highly volatile' environment 'would be a lot worse ... if the general quality of relations between staff and prisoners wasn't as good as it is'. [ More early release needed to alleviate overcrowded prisons, says Irish Penal Reform Trust Opens in new window ] Is there another way to respond to the troubled and troublesome in our society? He said that treating people in this way and then releasing them back into society was very unlikely to lead them to be law-abiding people. Asked about the Government's plan to create 1,500 more prison spaces, he said that a focus on capacity exclusively would 'absolutely not solve the problem'. Inspector Kelly's approach is in harmony with Whitaker, but the Government is heading headlong in the opposite direction. The Whitaker view was that 'most crime ... originates among unemployed youths in disadvantaged urban areas' and was best addressed by 'the promotion of social advance and social equity', which 'requires effective policies for employment ... for education, for housing and for health and welfare'. His Committee recommended limiting the number in prison, more use of non-custodial penalties and the decriminalisation of some offences. Since prison is costly and likely to be harmful, the core of policy, its members said, should be 'minimum use of custody, minimum use of security and normalisation of prison life'. This approach is based on the concept that the deprivation of liberty is in itself a sufficient punishment. So, in contrast to recent Ministers for Justice who seek to make very long sentences even longer, Whitaker proposed shortening sentences by various means, including greater remission, judicial reviews and 'supervised release at any stage if recommended by ... all the services operating in a prison'. The Whitaker Committee proposed basic living conditions in prison, but the standards they stipulated for every person in prison (single cells, daily out-of-cell time of at least 12 hours, good access to structured activities, dignified family contact) were abandoned wholesale in subsequent decades, leading to the dehumanising conditions that prevail today. Most Irish prisons are also now dysfunctional, at least partly, in that thousands are left with little or no access to basic services such as education, or support for issues such as addiction and mental health. This arises in large part from what John Lonergan describes as a warehousing approach, building cell spaces without providing the necessary services, supports or activities. While Whitaker advised institutions of about 100, the warehouses of today have become ever larger, as cellblocks for hundreds are shoehorned into already overcrowded places, as happened in Midlands, Castlerea and Wheatfield prisons. Today, Midlands and Mountjoy prisons each hold over 1,000. [ Bunk beds purchased to deal with prison overcrowding Opens in new window ] Widespread segregation, and often segregation within segregation and self-separation through fear or anxiety, make conditions worse and increase lock-up time hugely. The current programme for Government envisages intensifying this pattern and speaks of 'expanding existing capacity by 1,500' and recruiting additional prison officers. It makes no reference to providing any of the crucial 'caring services' which Whitaker advocated for all in prison – 'work, education, welfare and psychology'. The Whitaker Report recommended a prison system built on combining 'a caring as well as a custodial role'. Over a decade later, another Government report likewise advocated a rebalancing of custody/ care in the direction of care through 'strengthening of healthcare and of the psychological, educational and training elements'. Yet, prisons have moved decidedly in the opposite direction, driven by politicians seeking to look tough on crime. The Government view is that extra spaces are needed to lock up 'dangerous people', but that is a false characterisation of most people in prison, some of whom may be troublesome but who are more often deeply troubled with complex needs. It leaves those running the prison system, at all levels, in an impossible position. There is something very problematic about the current political approach to crime and punishment, repeatedly cramming more into prisons, all the time making things worse. Moreover, in an era when resources are again scarce, and the capacity of the construction industry in particular is insufficient to meet critical housing and infrastructure needs, can we really afford to splash over half a billion euro on building more substandard prison spaces? The current capital plan allocates €548 million for 1,100 spaces. This July, the Minister for Justice announced that this number will now rise to nearly 1,600 spaces, but the cost of the further expansion has yet to be published. And such outlays will have to be followed by inordinate day-to-day spending to hold people in counterproductive prison conditions. When full current public expenditure is calculated, it comes close to €100,000 per prisoner per year in prison. Surely, as the Whitaker Report indicates, there has to be another way to respond to the troubled and troublesome in our society? Kevin Warner worked for 30 years as national coordinator of education in Irish prisons and received a PhD for research on Nordic penal policy
