Profile Mary Finan: Mary Finan may be a star of Irish public relations, but does this mean she's the right person for her new role at RTÉ? Siobhán Creaton reports.
The Government has put another public relations guru in charge of the RTÉ Authority, appointing Mary Finan to the plum post vacated by Fintan Drury just over a month ago.
News of her imminent arrival at Montrose this week surprised Finan's friends and business associates and drew criticism from the Labour Party, which claimed that, as with Drury, her extensive business interests could pose potential conflicts of interest.
Those who know her say the post was tailor-made for Finan and that she will quickly bring her boundless energy and enthusiasm to the job. After a 37-year career in public relations, they believe, she will deftly defuse any controversies that may arise.
The Minister for Communications, Noel Dempsey, who announced the appointment on Tuesday, said Finan would bring "a wealth of experience in business generally and communications in particular" to the body that makes the major strategic decisions on behalf of Ireland's national broadcaster and acts effectively as its board.
In terms of her CV, Finan would appear to possess all of the necessary qualifications for the position. She was a co-founder of Wilson Hartnell Public Relations (WHPR), one of Ireland's biggest public relations companies, which handled clients such as Jefferson Smurfit, DCC, Fyffes and Diageo. Finan, who is now in her 60s, stepped down as the firm's managing director three years ago, and has received and accepted a long list of invitations to join the board of myriad organisations in the business and arts worlds.
She remains involved with WHPR, acting as its chairwoman. Finan also chairs the influential Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and is a director of Canada Life (Ireland) and the ICS Building Society. Her other directorships reflect her lifelong passion for the arts - they include Opera Ireland, the Gate Theatre, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Cheshire Foundation and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig. She is also a director of the Dublin City University Educational Trust, the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies and the Buildings of Ireland Charitable Trust. She was the first woman president of Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
The RTÉ post is arguably the most high-profile and prestigious of Finan's appointments and she is likely to lighten her directorship load in the months ahead to accommodate its demands.
She is said to be a good friend of RTÉ's director general, Cathal Goan, who is charged with the national broadcaster's day-to-day running, which should ensure a hearty welcome on her arrival. The new chairwoman will also be able to get a heads-up on what her job will entail from predecessor Paddy Wright, whom she would have worked with over many years at Jefferson Smurfit.
Like Drury, Finan has worked in RTÉ before, in a three-year stint during the 1960s as a presenter introducing guests on an Irish-language quiz show. It was around this time that she met her late husband, Geoffrey MacKechnie, a lecturer in business at Trinity College Dublin.
Finan is renowned for her raucous laugh and great sense of humour, and for telling stories against herself. She is very dramatic and indeed had flirted with the idea of becoming an actor before embracing the business world.
At a lunch she hosted for business journalists when she stepped down from WHPR she told hilarious stories poking fun at herself and at her guests. She recalled in her early years having won the account to promote men's suits made from crimplene. They never creased and always had a sheen and she decided it would be great to get some of Ireland's leading business figures to wear them. Her considerable powers of persuasion ensured that many of them donned the suits, and things were going well until one man told her how his trousers had begun to smoulder and smell when he stood close to an open fire at a function. Finan says she thought the captains of industry would lynch her. In the following years, though, tycoons such as Dr Michael Smurfit, Dr Tony Ryan, Fyffes founder Neil McCann and Jim Flavin of DCC became her loyal clients.
While the Labour Party this week jumped in to question her appointment, there was no shortage of people willing to wish her success and to talk about her suitability for the job.
Flavin describes her as "eminently qualified and entirely suitable" for her new role.
"She will be terrific," he says.
Smurfit, who has known Finan since the 1970s, was quick to return a phone call to talk about his long-time friend.
"I admire her courage for taking on such an extraordinarily high-profile job," he says. "She will do a very good job and will prove tougher than they think."
Commenting on her style of doing business, Smurfit says that Finan dealt with the media for the Jefferson Smurfit group in good and bad times for more than 30 years and had always had his respect and total confidence.
"You have to trust the person who is going to represent your company 100 per cent," he says. "She was often an insider in things that happened in the company and she never let us down. That was part of her talent: her integrity. Mary Finan means what she says and says what she means."
Another businessman says that Finan can sometimes give the impression that she is the "token woman" appointment but that she has many guises.
"She can put on her tough businesswoman face when telling a client how to handle something. She can be very firm and very sure of herself and you often end up agreeing to do something that was totally opposite to what you had intended," he says.
Of course, for many years Finan worked hard for and spoke in glowing terms of all of these clients when dealing with the media.
AMONG JOURNALISTS SHE is acknowledged as one of the most persistent PR people in trying to get photographs of her clients into the papers. And when unflattering pieces appeared about her clients she would be quick to tackle the perpetrators.
"She would come on all wounded that such things could be written about Michael or Tony or Jim," says one journalist. "She was unfailingly polite and always played a pretty straight bat but she was hopeless in terms of giving you a story."
Such discretion was all the more frustrating for journalists because if anyone knows what is going on in the highest echelons of Irish society it is definitely Mary Finan.
One friend describes her Dublin 4 home as the city's "social hub" where the great and good regularly gather for dinner parties, soirées and musical events.
One client remarks that when you hire Finan "you get a gang", referring to the extensive network she can introduce you to.
"She totally befriended us," he says. "She is always introducing people to each other. Wherever I go, I meet people that I met at Mary's house. They would be the head of this or the ambassador of somewhere."
Michael Colgan, who heads the Gate Theatre, is one of her closest friends; others include former Bank of Ireland governor Laurence Crowley and former AIB executive Dermot Egan, who are also now fellow directors at various companies.
While she is well-connected in corporate Ireland she has never been thought of as being close to any political party, making the Government's gift of the RTÉ post a bit of a surprise.
Indeed she has often said that her father's bruising experience with the Co Roscommon electorate many years ago, when he failed to be re-elected to the Dáil for the long- defunct Clann na Talún farmers' party, turned her off politics.
Some sources suggest that her nomination may have come from within the ranks of top civil servants who make up the so-called "permanent government", whom she would know through her connection with the ESRI economic think tank.
Finan has always managed to lead a full life and has kept busy since her husband's death more than a yearago. Outside of work her main passion is the arts.
She jogs three times a week at UCD with the "Belfield Bashers" and spends time at her place in Cannes in the south of France with her daughter, Victoria.
Her greatest problem in the future may be trying to juggle her many commitments now that she's become Ireland's new quango queen.
TheFinanFile
Who is she?
Mary Finan is the doyenne of Ireland's public relations industry
Why is she in the news?
She is the new chairwoman of the RTÉ Authority
Most appealing characteristic
Her sense of humour
Least appealing characteristic
Her discretion
Most likely to tell you?
A funny story about herself
Least likely to tell you?
A juicy story about Michael Smurfit