Obituary: Former RTÉ director general Joe Barry changed the face of Irish broadcasting
The late Joe Barry's most famous moment — bringing Eurovision to Millstreet — reflected his vision for media beyond the capital, as did his establishment of TG4 and regional RTÉ studios. Picture: Richard Mills
Joe Barry was a veteran of RTÉ, having commenced his career there in 1956, starting as a technician in the engineering division.
The ebullient Dunmanway man with the sparkling smile then worked his way up to the top position of director general of the national broadcaster from 1992 to 1997.
His forensic knowledge of the organisation, along with his unique interpersonal skills, which were readily manifest in his able dealings with staff during the bitter RTÉ strike of the early 1990s, characterised the essence of a formidable DG.
Barry’s tenure as DG would be immortalised by a tenacity of vision that saw him oversee four triumphs in the Eurovision Song Contest, the launch of TG4, and the opening of the RTÉ Cork studios, as well as producing, in 1994, a very comprehensive and insightful report on the context and complexities of television advertising aimed solely at children.
Barry has left an unrivalled and lasting legacy during his time in the top position at RTÉ.
While he would go on to chair the RTÉ Authority and remain engaged with Ireland’s cultural life, it is his pioneering stewardship and his formidable vision during his time as DG that deserves some illumination and rumination.
He took the reins at RTÉ in 1992, soon after Linda Martin mesmerised the Malmö audience with her rendition of the Johnny Logan classic, ‘Why Me?’
Then in stepped gutsy entrepreneur Noel C Duggan, whose mantra was “why not Millstreet?” artfor the staging of the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest.
To many urbanites, the concept seemed absurd. Millstreet, a tiny town in the north west of County Cork with a population of 1,500, with no train station, no main roads to Dublin, no hotels, and an unfinished equestrian centre.
Joe Barry, a native of another small Cork town called Dunmanway, along with a senior manager in RTÉ, Liam Miller, loved the idea, and embraced both the technical and creative challenges that staging the contest in Millstreet would involve.
Niamh Kavanagh duly won the 1993 contest with ‘In Your Eyes’ and now a headache loomed for Joe Barry, namely the cost of staging yet another worldwide event.
Barry would then become part of a legacy that created Riverdance, a dance extravaganza that was performed as an interval act, under the watchful eye of its co-creator Moya Doherty, herself the producer of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest.
Despite Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan winning that year with ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids’, it is the cultural legacy of Riverdance that still impacts today, and Joe Barry was part of all that iconography and mythmaking and reinvention of Ireland’s musical and artistic heritage.
Joe Barry’s affiliation with the Eurovision would end with Eimear Quinn winning in 1997 with ‘The Voice’, as Barry vacated the corner office as DG. Fortunately for him, he would no longer have to concern himself with the financial demands of staging a fourth Eurovision song contest in just five years.
During his tenure, Barry oversaw the launch of Teilifís na Gaeilge on October 31, 1996.
The annual cost of £20m was the subject of intense controversy, but the diplomatic Dunmanway man was more than able to allay the fears of then minister for arts and the Gaeltacht, Michael D Higgins, regarding RTÉ’s support of the Irish language.
Barry’s achievements are manifold, including laying the groundwork for digital television. He also cared deeply about the media entities beyond the centrifugal locus of Dublin, opening the new RTÉ Cork studios on Father Mathew Quay in 1995 at a cost of €1m, and host to a staff of 50.
Lest one forget also the setting up of the Independent Production Unit, along with Clare Duignan and her staff of commissioning editors, a legacy which still endures.
In his book, RTÉ and the Globalisation of Irish Television, former chairman of RTÉ, Farrel Corcoran, quotes Joe Barry on the solitary aspect of being a DG, which “often requires very lonely decisions”.
Barry would no doubt have endured many a solitary vigil as he dealt with the media fallout from contentious Late Late Show interviews such as that with Annie Murphy in 1992, where she revealed her affair with Bishop Eamonn Casey and that she had borne his child, and the Gerry Adams interview in 1994, following on from the revocation of Section 31.
Nonetheless, this dynamic Dunmanway man, who had dedicated almost all of his working life to RTÉ, should be remembered for his unerring stewardship of the national broadcaster from 1992 to 1997 and for that, he did the State some service.
• Finola Doyle-O’Neill is a broadcast and legal historian at the School of History, UCC. She is the author of .
