Award-winning broadcaster blazed a trail in Irish radio

Below is an obituary of Máire Ní Mhurchú. It appears in weekend edition of The Irish Times.

Máire is/was the sister of Dominican priest Canice Murphy.

What it doesn’t say in the obit is that the man she married at 69 was an old childhood fling of hers.

Obviously, just like her brother she must have been a super person, kind, honest and very smart.

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Cork-based RTÉ broadcaster Máire Ní Mhurchú has died aged 91. She was an award-winning presenter and later head of regional radio broadcasting in Cork city during the time when Raidió Éireann offered a radio service for Cork listeners for a few hours each day.

The Echo Boys, a profile of the newspaper boys who sold the Evening Echo on the streets of Cork city and Someone To Love, a two-part radio series on the harsh life in a convent orphanage in the 1960s, were among her most celebrated documentaries.

In 1969, she won a Jacob’s Award (Irish television and radio awards) for what was described as her “intuitive sympathy” for those she spoke with and her enthusiasm for broadcasting.

She was also responsible for launching the careers of a large number of well-known contemporary RTÉ broadcasters including Mary Wilson, Tony O’Donoghue, Eileen Whelan, Ger Canning and Marty Morrissey.

Following Marie Murphy’s death (she took on the Irish version of her name when she joined RTÉ), many of her former colleagues and mentees recalled her beautiful, gentle radio voice, her quiet dignity and her elegance.

RTÉ Radio 1 broadcaster and Morning Ireland presenter Mary Wilson said it was Ní Mhurchú who first hired her along with Eileen Whelan and Tony O’Donoghue. “We had the run of the Union Quay – as the HQ of the RTÉ Radio Cork opt-out, Cork 89FM, was known. Under Máire’s guidance and under the direction of the station’s three excellent producers, Pat O’Donovan, Aidan Stanley and Dan Collins, we were given opportunities to report on stories the length and breadth of the country, many of them of national significance,” said Wilson.

Reflecting on those years, Wilson added that Ní Mhurchú was managing a radio station long before women were seen in such roles in Ireland. “She certainly blazed a trail for others to follow. She gave us the opportunity to break into broadcasting and I like to think that she looked at the careers we each carved out in RTÉ with some pride. She wasn’t given to micromanaging but she did tell me it was important to put ‘a smile in your voice’. Good advice that I try to follow.”

Sports commentator Ger Canning said he owed his career as a sports journalist to Ní Mhurchú. “In 1978, I trained as a newsreader in RTÉ but I declined the offer to become a newsreader as I wanted to get into sport. I went back to Cork and she welcomed me in and gave me my first-ever full-time commentary at the Cork county hurling final between Blackrock and Glen Rovers. The day before she rang me to say, ‘Do your best, get the scores right and it will be okay’.”

Radio presenter Alf McCarthy, who grew up close to Ní Mhurchú in Cork, also worked with her and remembers the strict, hierarchical atmosphere that existed in the Cork office at the time. “Raidió Éireann was very much part of the Civil Service at that time and she brought a sense of order. When we arrived as the young and groovy presenters, there was a clash of cultures in a sense. I took over from Mark Cagney when he moved to 2FM,” recalls McCarthy.

Ní Mhurchú began her radio career in RTÉ Cork local radio in the 1950s. At that time, the Cork station was on air for a limited number of hours a week, relaying the national radio service at other times. It remained the only local radio station in Ireland until the pirate radio stations and later the independent stations began.

Enthusiastic right from the start, Ní Mhurchú carried the heavy Uher 4000 DS portable tape recorder to schools and homes to record hours and hours of interviews with children for several series. These included Young Munster on the Air, Munster Journal and Children Talking. She also worked with broadcaster Síle Ní Bhriain on a series entitled A Woman’s World.

And, with a team of helpers, she put together the annual hour-long programme about the Cork Choral Festival, which attracted choirs from around the world for a number of years.

Her piece for radio on the Echo Boys was filmed for television in 1977. The boys told her how they earned tuppence for every copy they sold and how the best stand was down by Ford’s car factory. Remarking on the young age of some of the sellers, Ní Mhurchú was told by one of the main distributors in Cork that he, too, was selling the papers at seven and eight years of age and that the experience helped give him a sense of the outside world.

In 1989, Ní Mhurchú was promoted to divisional head of Cork Local Radio, which was rebranded as Cork 89FM when the first independent radio stations were being licensed. She retired in 1998.

The radio station was subsequently closed down as a loss-making enterprise years before the current RTÉ television and radio studios in Cork city emerged as the country’s second biggest broadcasting hub.

Máire Ní Mhurchú was born in Dublin, the eldest of five children of Nora (nee McCarthy) and Lieut Col John Murphy. The family moved to the Cork suburb of Ballinlough when she was 13 when her father took up a role in the Defence Forces there.

His subsequent death while the children were still young meant that following her secondary school education at St Aloysius’ Girls School in Carrigtwohill, Ní Mhurchú began her working life to bring income to the family. Before joining RTÉ Cork local radio, she worked with the Dutch consul for a time. She remained in her family home to look after her mother until her death in the early 1990s.

After her retirement, Ní Mhurchú stayed in Cork and at the age of 69, she married a widower, retired Lieut Col Paddy Kelly.

She spent the last number of years of her life in Bishopscourt Residential Care in Liskillea, Co Cork.

Ní Mhurchú is survived by her husband, her two stepdaughters Toni (Marie) and Carol-Anne, and her brother Pádraig. She was predeceased by her sister Sr MF de Chantal and brothers John and Fr Canice (Michael) Murphy.