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Marian Finucane (born 1950) is an Irish broadcaster with RTÉ.

Background

Finucane was born in Dublin and educated at Scoil Chaitríona, and the College of Technology, Bolton Street, Dublin. She practised as an architect until 1974 when she joined RTÉ as a continuity announcer, having been recruited by Eoghan Harris.^[3] In 1976 she became a programme presenter working mainly on programmes concerned with contemporary social issues, especially those concerning women, in particular the hugely influential Women Today.^[1]

Finucane in 1979 was the recipient of a Jacobs' Award for Women Today. Her Liveline programme on radio, a combined interview and phone-in chat show on weekday afternoons, attracted a large listenership from the outset and won for Finucane the Radio Journalist of the Year Award in 1988.^[4]

Her television work included major information programming on RTÉ such as "Consumer Choice" and the Garda investigation programme Crime Line.

Along the way, there was a failed marriage^[1], and then two children with her partner, John Clarke. Their daughter, Sinead, developed leukaemia, and died, aged eight, in 1990.

On Gay Byrne's retirement in 1999, she took over his early morning radio slot to present The Marian Finucane Show. Another broadcaster, Joe Duffy, took over her Liveline programme. On 24 June 2005 she presented her final Marian Finucane Show in that time-slot. One of her guests that morning was President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. McAleese described Finucane as "the country's top female broadcaster", saying she was possessed with "the wonderful gift of phlegmatic broadcasting". Later that afternoon she received an honorary degree from NUI Galway. Apart from her media work this degree was in recognition of her work raising funds along with Clarke, towards the building of an AIDS hospice and orphanage in Cape Town, South Africa. In June 2005 she was replaced in her radio timeslot by Ryan Tubridy, and took over morning slots on Saturday and Sunday.^[1]

Earnings

Marian Finucane earned €380,507 in 2003 and €439,265 in 2004 at RTÉ ^[2] and €570,000 in 2008 [1]RTÉ's Director General said there was “no question that by today’s standards” the salaries paid to its top presenters last year “were excessive”.I have to repeat that they were set at a different time in a different competitive reality where some of this talent might be up for poaching by other organisations and in RTÉ’s view at the time, they delivered value for money" .Fine Gael said the 2008 figure would rub “salt in the wounds of the many people who have lost their jobs or taken significant pay cuts in an effort to achieve wage restraint”. Labour's Liz McManus criticised RTÉ for not releasing the data sooner and said "This information should be easily available and there should be no question of concealing it or making it in any way inaccessible ".^[5]

References