The Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Mr Alex White, TD, has obtained Government approval for the appointment of seven members of the RTÉ Board.
On the Minister’s nomination, Moya Doherty was appointed as Chair to serve alongside four newly appointed Ministerial nominees: Frank Hannigan, Deborah Kelleher, PJ Mathews, Anne O’Leary. Mr Fergus Armstrong was also reappointed to the Board.
Additionally, the recently elected RTÉ staff representative, Mr Aengus Mac Grianna, was appointed by Government. RTÉ director-general Noel Curran is also a member of the Board. Four existing board members, nominated by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications, remain in place until their terms expire in February 2015. They are Orlaith Carmody, Aileen O’Meara, Eunice O’Raw and Stuart Switzer.
Minister White said the new Board members were people of high calibre who had been selected because they had substantial experience, or had shown capacity, under one or more of the required criteria set out in Section 82(1) of the Broadcasting Act 2009. He said he was confident that the new Board would steer RTÉ to greater financial stability and ever closer to its stated objective of becoming a public service multimedia organisation.
He stated: “Moya Doherty is a gifted, experienced and successful broadcaster, communicator and businesswoman with the highest reputation both in Ireland and abroad. I am delighted that she has agreed to take on the role of RTÉ Chair, particularly at this challenging time of change in broadcasting and emerging communications technologies.”
Moya Doherty said she was honoured to be appointed to the Chair of the RTÉ Board: “From modest beginnings as a young woman in the late 1970’s I joined RTÉ and through the past 35 years most of my professional life has been in communications and broadcasting in Ireland, the UK and the USA. Creativity and commerce are intertwined in this era of fragmentation and there has never been a greater need for the personality of public service broadcasting to be nurtured and cherished in the midst of this ecology of change.
“The next few years will see RTÉ having to find structures capable of redefining the role of public service broadcasting in a media space transformed by social and digital technologies. I am looking forward to the challenge and privilege of working alongside all who are part of the RTÉ community, internal and external, to help to carve a strong identity for the future for the public service broadcaster.”
Minister White also took the opportunity to express his gratitude to the Chair and outgoing members of the RTÉ Board for the work done under the term of their stewardship.
