Ciaran Mullooly pens book on future of Midlands and RTÉ crisis

Former RTÉ Midlands Correspondent says trust in broadcaster "must be rebuilt"

Ciaran Mullooly, who was the face of Midlands news on RTÉ for more than a quarter of a century, is to release a new book that will include his thoughts on the current crisis at the national broadcaster.

The book, The Future Is Now, is due for release on September 16, and it will also cover his involvement in community development and the Midlands' changing industrial landscape with Bord na Móna and the ESB moving away from peat-fired power generation.

The Lanesborough man said he is expecting to hold a book launch in the Athlone area, and at the moment this is pencilled in for the week starting September 25.

Ciaran retired from RTÉ in the summer of 2021 and, having volunteered in community work for decades, he became a community development and social enterprise worker with Roscommon Leader Partnership.

As he switched to making community work his full-time focus, he encountered some major challenges in the post-pandemic Midlands.

"When I left RTÉ it was during Covid, and it was a shocking time. There were huge pressures on everybody, particularly those who lost relatives, God rest them.

"But I found that, after Covid, there were so many challenges at rural level and it kind of propelled me into this new job," he said on Monday.

"Things like men's health, rural transport, rebuilding, social enterprise, creating employment - all of those things became far more urgent when we were coming back after the pandemic.

"It surprised me how much people were on the floor, morale-wise. Financially people were a lot worse off, particularly those in small businesses who maybe didn't have the level of subsidies and supports others had. So I've kind of been stunned by the way things have changed in the Midlands."

The idea for the book - which will be his third to date - came to him in the months after his retirement from RTÉ.

Referring to Bord na Móna, Just Transition, and the generation of new jobs in the region, he said there was need for such efforts to be "fast-forwarded".

"That is a big focus of the book - trying to come up with proposals, suggestions and ideas in that regard.

"I'm kind of saying that the time is now to get on with this stuff if we're going to have a future in this part of the world for the families who were involved."

When asked about Ryan Tubridy's departure from RTÉ, he said its new director general Kevin Bakhurst had to rebuild confidence in the company.

"When this story first broke, I said that Ryan Tubridy and his agent would emerge from it with a lot of questions to answer, but that he would have a future career in broadcasting. And I still think that's the case.

"Unfortunately for Ryan Tubridy, there's a new chief in town and some of the things that went on during the previous ten years in RTÉ are not going to go on in future, which I think is good news for both the licence payer and for my former colleagues there.

"What was going on was crazy, in terms of the management of the company, as we have heard from the Oireachtas committees and everything else.

"So while I'm sympathetic for what happened to Ryan Tubridy, I think the priority for RTÉ has to be to rebuild confidence. The new director general has to take steps to reassure people that what happened will never happen again," he concluded.