{"id":275847,"date":"2026-02-01T19:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275847\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T19:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:53:07","slug":"joe-mulholland-former-rte-tv-chief-and-founder-of-macgill-summer-school-dies-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275847\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Mulholland, former RT\u00c9 TV chief and founder of MacGill Summer School, dies \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Mulholland<\/a>, a former managing director of RT\u00c9<\/a> television and founder director of the MacGill Summer School, has died. He died on Saturday night. <\/p>\n

He spent a decade as a television producer and director, winning several awards for his documentaries, then began his management career in 1980 as editor of current affairs.<\/p>\n

He edited the flagship Today Tonight programme, a forerunner of Prime Time, during its heyday in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

In a career punctuated by controversy and acclaim he pulled current affairs out of the doldrums and turned Today Tonight into one of the station\u2019s most successful programmes.<\/p>\n

Following 10 years at the helm of current affairs he spent a brief period as controller of external productions before serving seven years as director of news and then three years as managing director of television. He retired from the broadcaster in 2000. <\/p>\n

His interest in the Donegal writer Patrick MacGill led to the establishment of the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal in 1981 which takes place at the end of July every year.<\/p>\n

Still running, it has over the decades sparked many key public debates and attracted taoisigh, ministers and politicians along with officials, diplomats, economists and journalists. Joe Mulholland stood down as director in 2024 aged 83 but remained involved.<\/p>\n

From Stranorlar, near Ballybofey in Co Donegal<\/a> he spoke in an interview of the \u201cdreadful, appalling\u201d conditions his family lived in, in a cottage with no running water.<\/p>\n

\u201cI and my brother got diphtheria. We were carted away to Donegal town on the same night. They were just developing an antidote then, so we were pulled out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His family moved when he was 11 to a State-built house in the Ard McCarron estate in Ballybofey \u201cbuilt by de Valera\u201d: \u201cIt was like heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JoeJoe Mulholland. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Joe Mulholland: \u2018We had some amazing days, and nights … Politics was different then\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Following primary school, he won a scholarship to the privately-run Finn College in Ballybofey.<\/p>\n

Unable to get a university scholarship, he worked for a local merchant, Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> senator Paddy McGowan, eventually doing the books for the business, then moved to London to become a schoolteacher, first getting a job in the John Lewis department store.<\/p>\n

He won a place in a De La Salle teacher training college in Manchester, spending three years there and developing his managerial skills by running shows for the college\u2019s French society.<\/p>\n

Before he joined RT\u00c9 he spent years studying and working in France, where he met his wife Annie Vuillemin from Alsace-Lorraine, to whom he was married for 60 years. The couple have three children: Fiona, Sylvain and Julien. <\/p>\n

Funeral arrangements are expected to be announced later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Mulholland, a former managing director of RT\u00c9 television and founder director of the MacGill Summer School, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1485,895,61,60,43,6085],"class_list":["post-275847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-donegal","tag-fianna-fail","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}