Muiris Mac Conghail

Muiris Mac Conghail (12 May 1941 – 25 November 2019)[1] was an Irish journalist, writer, broadcaster, poet and film-maker.

Early life

Mac Conghail was born in Dublin, son of artists Maurice MacGonigal and Aida Kelly. His father, a cousin of Harry Clarke, had been a republican activist during the Irish War of Independence before studying, and then teaching, at the RHA schools.[2]

Mac Conghail was educated at University College Dublin.

Career

He joined Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) in the 1960s, one of a group of young broadcasters which included Aindreas Ó Gallchóir,[3] Breandán Ó hEithir, James Plunkett Kelly, Donal Farmer and Seán Mac Réamoinn. He became producer and editor of the current affairs programme 7 Days, which started broadcasting in 1966.[4] He won a Jacob's Television Award in 1967 and 1985.[5]

In May 1973, he was appointed Assistant Secretary at the Department of the Taoiseach and Head of the Government Information Bureau.[6]

He was RTÉ Controller of Programmes, television, 1977–1980 and 1983–1986.

In 2001 he delivered the Thomas Davis Lecture to mark the 75th anniversary of Radio Éireann -'Politics by Wireless'.[7]

Personal life

Mac Conghail married Máire Doran and they have five children, including Fiach, former Director of the Abbey Theatre.[8] They separated in the 1990s, and divorced in 2007.

Mac Conghail married Mary Malone in 2008: they had lived together for the previous 15 years.

Select writings
  • Aghaidheanna Fidil Agus Puicini (Biography of George Thompson)
  • Island Funeral (1965)
  • The Blaskets: A Kerry Island Library (1987) ISBN 0-946172-12-9
  • The Blaskets — People and Literature
  • Politics by Wireless: News and Current Affairs on Radio, 1926–2000 (2001)
  • Essay on David Thornley in Unquiet Spirit: Essays in memory of David Thornley. Edited by Yseult Thornley (Liberties Press)
gollark: This is really awful. I've managed to recover *some* of the new region files (from the corrupted forge-side backup), I think all the nether/end, and the level.dat, but no playerdata. Kind of annoyed at myself for misconfiguring the backup thing... anyway, if anyone has suggestions for getting more data out, or wants their own copy of stuff, you can ask, but I'm going to shut it down.
gollark: It autorestarts, that wouldn't help.
gollark: I'm going to try and run a file recovery thing on the disk now, then try and fix the zip, and if neither works guess it's an older version or ***DOOM***.
gollark: Yep! Stuff does change, via chunkloading.
gollark: I'm pretty annoyed at myself for somehow constantly managing to mess it up.

References
  1. Writer, programme-maker Muiris Mac Conghail dies, RTE 26 November 2019
  2. Irish Art 1900-1950, Rosc, 1975.
  3. Gaeilgeoir whose media career spanned four eventful decades Irish Times, 2011-07-23.
  4. Horgan, John. Broadcasting and Public Life: RTÉ News and Current Affairs 1926–1997. Four Courts Press (2004). ISBN 1-85182-839-7
  5. Muiris Mac Conghail obituary: broadcaster who guided RTÉ's current affairs in its early years. Irish Times, 30 November 2019
  6. Dáil debates
  7. RTÉ Press Release Archived 2009-09-09 at the Wayback Machine
  8. Family
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