Independent Judging panel 2022

Claire Grady began her career as a journalist with the Mayo News, and worked on the Connaught Telegraph and the Tallaght Echo before joining Independent News and Media where she worked for almost 30 years.

She was a news reporter with both the Evening Herald and Irish Independent for over a decade and spent two years as a reporter with the Sunday Tribune before joining the the Irish Independent newsdesk under the editorship of the late Vinnie Doyle.
Claire was appointed Executive Editor of the Evening Herald in 2006, a role which included commissioning columnists and being opinion editor.
She was appointed editor of the Herald in 2012, and editor of the Irish Independent in 2013, a post she held for a year. She retains a keen interest in the production and presentation of news and is an occasional contributor to radio and television news review programmes.

Brendan Keenan was born in Belfast and educated at St McNissis s College in County Antrim and Queen s University, Belfast. He joined the Belfast Telegraph in 1969 as a junior reporter and throughout the period of the early years of The Troubles , he reported on the violence and trials which took place.

In 1973 he was appointed Deputy Political Correspondent at the Belfast Telegraph where he covered the original inquiry into Bloody Sunday headed by the English Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, the Ulster workers strike and the fall of the power-sharing Executive.

In 1976 he became a reporter and presenter for RTE News Features where he conducted interviews on the News at One-Thirty and This Week before being appointed Economics correspondent in 1981.

In 1983 he joined the Financial Times as Ireland Correspondent. As well as covering the continuing economic crisis of the period, this role also took in the turbulent politics of the time in the Republic and coverage of Northern Ireland, with the various political initiatives taking place.

In 1986 he became Business Editor of the Irish Independent where he was responsible for the production of the business pages of the newspaper and introduced the Thursday business supplement. He was Economics Editor from 1992-2012 and now writes a weekly economics column.

Tom McEnaney has over 20 years’ experience as a reporter, editor, columnist and broadcaster with a number of Irish national newspapers and radio stations.

Until 2019 he was a weekly business columnists with The Times Ireland, having previously been a business columnist with the Irish editions of both The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. He is the former business editor of both the Irish Independent and the Sunday Times Ireland. His other print roles include deputy editor of Business & Finance Magazine, business reporter with the Sunday Tribune, property editor of the Sunday Tribune, and business reporter with the Irish Times.

Tom established the Sunday Business Show on Today FM, which he both presented and edited. He also a former presenter of both Down to Business and the Breakfast Business on Newstalk.

Tom currently works as a corporate media consultant with McEnaney Media

Emmet Oliver is a lecturer, editor, broadcaster and writer on business and economic
issues.
He is currently a teaching fellow at Trinity College Business School and a lecturer at UCD Quinn Business School. Previous to this Emmet was director of global communications at IDA Ireland. In his journalism career he started his career at the Irish Times and later worked in London with Bloomberg News, covering UK and European
quoted companies.
While at the Irish Times he worked as a Business Correspondent, News Reporter, Education Correspondent, Media Columnist and Assistant Business Editor. Emmet has also been Editor of the Sunday Business Post and an editor at the Irish Independent. Emmet is a graduate of UCD and DCU, and holds a qualification in Corporate Governance. Emmet regularly broadcasts and presents programming on economic and financial subjects at NewsTalk 106. He also hosts the UCD Business School podcast, Business Impact.

Frank Fitzgibbon is the former Editor of The Sunday Times Ireland Edition, which he edited for 15 years from 2005 until 2020.

He is was of the four founders of The Sunday Business Post which launched in 1989. He also worked for the Sunday Tribune, Business & Finance Magazine and as a presenter and reporter on current affairs for RTE Television.

Fionnuala McCarthy is editorial director of Lonely Planet, where she has worked for the past six years.
Previous roles included head of features and magazines at INM, magazine editor at The Sunday Tribune, editor of Woman's Way, editor of U magazine and features editor of Ireland on Sunday.

Sebastian is former Director and Group Editor of DMG Ireland. He is currently Head of Public Affairs with Revolut Ireland

Willie Kealy is the former Deputy Editor of the Sunday Independent

Davin O’Dwyer manages the Content team at Intercom, the Irish-founded customer communications platform.
In this role, Davin oversees one of the most admired content marketing programs in the B2B software space - the Intercom editorial team publishes books, podcasts and blog posts that are consumed by more than a million readers and listeners every year.
Before joining Intercom, Davin spent 12 years as a journalist at the Irish Times, working in production across features and the newsroom, as well as writing regularly about technology and culture issues.
His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Slate.

Moira Hannon's career in journalism has spanned three decades. She worked as a news sub-editor in several national newspapers before becoming features editor of the Irish Daily Star. At present, she freelances as a multimedia journalist with RTÉ.

Mick McCaffrey is head of News and Sport for Virgin News . He previously worked as News Editor at UTV Ireland and the Sunday Tribune as well as a senior reporter with the Sunday World and Evening Herald.  He is a previous winner of the Newsbrands Ireland Journalism Awards having been named Crime Journalist of Year in 2013

Trevor White is Director of the Little Museum of Dublin.​ ​

He founded The Dubliner magazine and edited Ireland’s best ​-​ selling restaurant guide, The Dubliner 100 Best Restaurants, for many years.

​His third book, Alfie: The Life and Times of Alfie Byrne, will be published by Penguin Ireland this autumn.

Jennifer O'Brien works for RTÉ in TV, Radio and Online Communications and is a two-time winner of the Showbiz Story of the Year Award (2011 & 2018 ). A graduate of the MA Journalism at National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2006, Jennifer commenced her career in journalism as a reporter with The Longford News. She went on to work as features writer and Showbiz Editor at The Irish Sun, before moving to London in as Editor of the Bizarre Column at the UK Edition, and then Senior Online Producer for Good Morning Britain at ITV. She returned to Ireland and News International in 2017, working for The Times Ireland Edition as Arts Correspondent, before making the move to Communications in RTÉ

Dara Doyle is Senior Editor with Bloomberg Ireland

Michael Foley is Professor Emeritus at the School of Media, DIT. He is a journalist and author and taught journalism at DIT from BA to PhD level and was also head of journalism for a number of years. He has worked in media development for the BBC’s development wing, the International Federation of Journalism, Unicef and Unesco in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He was a journalist with The Irish Times where he held a number of positions, including Education Correspondent and Media Correspondent.

Hannah-Louise Dunne is Head of Content Partnerships at Core.

She has a background in journalism, broadcast and advertising and joined Core in 2014, following a 6-year-tenure with the Irish Daily Mail as Showbusiness Editor. In her role with Core agency, Radical, Hannah-Louise led creative content and digital strategy for clients across the public, private and charity sector going onto lead the team to win two global awards in the Content Marketing Awards in the US in 2017.
Since March 2018, she has worked across partnerships and through-the-line brand campaigns in Core as Head of Content Partnerships, leading strategic partnerships and creative projects for clients across Core’s media, creative and sponsorship practises.
She has served as a member of the Marketing Society’s inaugural Future Council, is an avid sea-swimmer and lectures in content marketing and social media for the Digital Marketing Institution in IBAT.
Hannah-Louise is passionate about communications, storytelling and the innovative ways digital channels offer to connect brands and audiences. She holds a degree in English and History from NUI Galway, an MA in Journalism from DCU and a PostGrad Diploma in Advertising & Digital Media from DIT.

Luke Holohan is a journalist who specializes in online media and video verification. Luke previously worked for Metro Herald, UTV Ireland and Ruptly News, a video agency where he sourced and verified news media distributed to outlets such as the Daily Mail, Al Jazeera, CBS, and NHK.

Currently working as a freelance journalist, Luke’s writing has featured in Il Giornale, Candide Magazine, Totally Dublin, InsideOver, The Reed and Extra.ie.

Kathy Armstrong works as the Digital Content Manager for Concern Worldwide.

Before moving to the communications sector, she worked with some of Ireland's leading newspapers for almost a decade. After starting with The Irish Mirror as an intern, she held roles including News Reporter and Travel Editor, as well as writing a weekly column. Kathy then worked with Independent.ie for five years, first as a digital reporter, before moving on to become Lead Editor of the Audience team.

Alan is an award-winning journalist and former Assitant Editor with the Limerick Leader newspaper. He has significant experience at local, regional and national level and was a regular contributor to radio throughout his career.

NED & Strategic Advisor
Múirne Laffan has a global track record building teams, products, brands and revenues in News, Sport & Entertainment at RTÉ and McCann Worldgroup. She now sits on several boards, is working with several start-ups on product and business strategy, including Noa (NewsOverAudio).
She started her career in advertising in London, joined RTÉ as GM, RTÉ Commercial Enterprises Limited, in 2001. She subsequently worked as MD of RTÉ Publishing MD of RTÉ Digital and was was member of the executive board, becoming Chief Digital Officer in 2015. Prior to RTÉ, Múirne was SVP, Director of Worldwide Clients at McCann-Erickson in New York, set up McCann Interactive and was a founding executive board member of UM, one of the world’s largest media agencies..
Múirne has been included in the top 50 Global CDO Influencers, 100 Women in STEM, Women of Influence in Irish Sport, Ad Age Media Innovators and was Chair of the EBU Digital Steering Committee. She is Chair of TV Committee and Board member of the Irish Television & Film Academy, Board member of the Digital Repository of Ireland and of Drinkaware. Múirne is a graduate of TU Dublin’s College of Marketing & Design and Trinity College Dublin.

Caitlin McBride is an author and former journalist who spent more than a decade working in national newspapers and magazines. She is the former Executive Editor of Independent.ie, and currently works in digital marketing strategy."

Patrick is an award-winning radio producer, podcast host, and communications strategist, with over 20-years experience working in traditional and digital media. He has produced shows including The Last Word with Matt Cooper (Today FM), The Big Bite with David McWilliams (RTE TV), and Beat Talk with Niall Power (Beat 102 103) .
In 2017 Patrick founded AudioBrand, a podcasting agency that creates turnkey podcast series for brands including EY, Ibec, Irish Life, Sisk, SuperValu / The Happy Pear, Mario Rosenstock, GIY, TELUS International, and Dublin City University.
Patrick is the founder and director of The Today FM School of Radio and Podcasting; he also creates and delivers bespoke podcast training programmes for organisations including The Public Relations Institute of Ireland and Learning Waves Skillnet.

Cassie Delaney is co-founder and chief executive of Outcaster. She is also Founder and Director of Tall Tales podcast production, founder and director of Rogue Collective, a weekly digital magazine. Cassie formerly worked for Maximum Media and Jobbio.

Joe Breen is a former managing editor (production, presentation and design) at the Irish Times. During 36 years at the newspaper he held a number of posts including chief-sub-editor, opinion page editor and duty editor. He was the launch editor of the online edition in 1994. After he left the newspaper, he graduated with a masters in media and international conflict from UCD’s Clinton Institute in 2011. He subsequently lectured on journalism at the institute and in DCU. He has contributed to a number of books on Irish media history and in 2018 he co-edited, with Dr Mark O’Brien, “The Sunday Papers - A History of Ireland’s Weekly Press” (Four Courts Press). He is a member of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland. In a different life he has written extensively on popular music for more than 40 years.

Siobhan Cronin is the Editor of the Southern Star newspaper.

The Southern Star is a West Cork-based, family-owned media company encompassing print, digital and creative design functions.

Siobhan's 35 year careeer includes senior roles at the Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, In Dublin magazine (editor), and several regional newspapers, including the Leitrim Observer, Longford News and Nationalist group of newspapers in Carlow and Kildare.

Sean Dunne is a former award-winning news reporter with The Irish Times, Sunday Independent, Irish Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday newspapers. He is currently the producer of Virgin Media’s flagship current affairs nightly news programme ‘The Tonight Show

Kate Shanahan is Head of Journalism and Communications at TU Dublin where she is also Senior Lecturer. Kate is an award-winning journalist and TV and Radio producer, and contributes to media both as a columnist and broadcast expert. She has worked as a Producer, and Series Producer for Ireland’s national Television and Radio station RTÉ, and some of Ireland's leading TV production companies, across both current affairs and lifestyle strands. Kate is a founding member of the Women Leaders in Higher Education network, has contributed to both national and international conferences on news and social media, journalism education, story-sourcing, fake news and fact-checking. She sits on the Research Advisory Board of the European Journalism Training Association, is a mentor for Women On Air Ireland, and has worked as a facilitator for the Council of Europe Media and Diversity program. Recent book chapters include 'Recalling the Celtic Tiger' (Peter Lang International) and 'Accreditation and Assessment of Journalism education in Europe' (Nomos)

Miriam Donohoe has more than 30 years experience in journalism and communications, having worked across a wide variety of newspapers including The Irish Times, INM, the Irish Examiner, and the Sunday Tribune. She now works as a Head of Communications with Trocaire

Mike Gilson is a former Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and The Scotsman. He has freelanced for among others The Guardian, Times, Sunday Times, Irish Times, The Lancet.

Des Gibson is former Editor of the Irish Daily Star and Head of Tabloids with INM. He is now owner and founder of Gibson Pro Media (GPM) Solutions

Dave O’Connell is Group Editor of the Connacht Tribune, a role he has held for the past ten years.

A graduate of journalism at the College of Commerce in Rathmines in 1983, he started as a reporter with the Connacht Tribune that year before moving to the then-Cork Examiner in 1989. He was promoted to Deputy Editor and News Editor of the Cork Evening Echo before leaving to take up a role as Assistant News Editor with the Star in 1995.

He worked as News Editor and Night Editor there until he departed for the Westmeath Independent in 2001, where he was appointed editor – a role that was subsequently expanded to Group Editor with the Westmeath Examiner Group, serving as editor of the Westmeath Examiner, Westmeath Independent and Offaly Independent.

A regular presenter and contributor with RTE, he has presented Saturday View, Grassroots (a series on local government) and Late Debate as well as filling in as presenter on Drivetime, Today with Pat Kenny and Tonight with Vincent Browne. He currently shares the weekly regional newspaper review slot on Drivetime with John O’Connor.

A native of Oughterard, Co Galway, he is married to the RTE journalist Teresa Mannion and they have two sons, Cian and Tom.

Denis has worked as a producer, presenter, and reporter for international, national & local television & radio stations and he has covered over 50 major international sporting
events.

Adrian Barry is Operations Director and broadcaster at Off The Ball. Former Sports Broadcaster of the Year who has worked in sports media for over 20 years as reporter and desk editor at 98FM and FM104 and later as producer and then Sports Editor at Newstalk. He produced and then presented various shows across Setanta Sports and later eirSport. Adrian also served on the steering group and the media committee on the 20x20 movement as well as being a judge on the eirSport Sports Book of the Year awards.

A relative late-comer to journalism, Drogheda native Jack cut his teeth in local newspapers in the mid-1990s before joining the Irish Mail on Sunday (then Ireland on Sunday). He spent 20 years as a writer and Sports Editor, including a period as Sports Editor in Chief of the Irish Mail on Sunday and Irish Daily Mail before seeking a fresh challenge. Currently working with Revenue.ie’s Communications and Knowledge department, he retains a keen interest in the newspaper industry as both a reader and a freelance contributor.

Graham is a former former feature writer with Irish Times, Irish Independent, Irish Post and the Business Post. Former Broadcast journalist with RTÉ Radio 1, BBC Local Radio and Radio Kerry. Occasional Television contributor and Contributing Editor.
Graham is the Founder of the Sanctuary Runners Movement, a solidarity-through-sport initiative which uses running to bring together asylum seekers, refugees and those in wider Irish society (expanding internationally soon). Also founder of Translate Ireland Multilingual Video Messaging Ltd - an initiative which produces vital Multilingual Video Messaging for migrants on everything from Public Health to Visa information, education, services.

Valerie Wheeler is a Sports Broadcaster and Radio Presenter with SPIN Southwest and RTÉ.

Mick O’Keeffe is Chief Executive of Teneo’s Irish office.

He is a regular media analyst and contributes to national and local radio, national TV, magazines and newspapers in Ireland.

Mick has represented the Republic of Ireland in football at underage and universities level and Dublin in GAA at all levels including senior. He is a current member of the Dublin Football over 40s team!

Mairead Lavery is the former editor of Irish Country Living, the magazine supplement in the Irish Farmers Journal, .She organises the annual Women & Agriculture conference and the bi-annual Women & Agriculture Awards
Mairead is a former joint winner of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists ‘National Journalist of the Year Award’ and won the National Print category on two occasions. She also won the ‘John Healy Award for Regional Journalism’ and was voted ‘Consumer Magazine Editor of the Year’ 2013.
She contributes weekly to Newstalk’s Sean Moncrieff Show and is a regular panellist on The Breakfast Show on Newstalk, on RTE’s Today Show and TV 3’s Elaine and Ireland AM shows.

Mairead served on the board of Agri Aware, the farming and food education body from 2000-2010 and was its chairman for five of these years. She chaired Failte Ireland’s B&B Strategic Implementation Group from 2010/11. She is a former board member of Foynes Port Company, Limerick County Development Board and West Limerick Resources - the LEADER and social inclusion company for west Limerick.
She represented IFA on the National Economic and Social Council. She is a former County Chairman of Limerick IFA and represented the county on the IFA Executive Council.

Allan Prosser is the former Editor of the Irish Examiner. Retired since 2020, he has spent 50 years in journalism during which he did every job on the publishing side of the business from junior reporter to managing director. He spent 16 years working in Ireland with the Irish Examiner, initially as a project manager, then as head of editorial operations before following Tim Vaughan as Editor in 2016.
Allan worked previously in B2B publications with United Business Media as Editor of Farmers Guardian; was digital publishing manager for Eastern Counties Newspapers Group (now Archant); MD of York and County Press and North of England Newspapers; Editorial Director of the Kent Messenger Group and Editor of The Northern Echo. He has also edited paid-for weeklies and free newspapers and magazines. He moved in May from Cork to Cambridge

Alana Fearon is a former journalist who started her Dublin career at the Irish Daily Star on Sunday, before moving to the Irish Daily Mirror. She was founding editor of Dublin Live before moving to Jamaica in 2017 where she was Head of Content Strategy for a family of breaking news websites across the Caribbean. She moved back to Ireland in August 2020 and is currently Head of Web and Digital at the Law Society of Ireland. The Journalism Awards were always a highlight of Alana's year, and she was twice nominated in her heyday!

Following a 25 year career in journalism with newspapers such as The Kerryman and the Irish Daily Star, Catherine Halloran served as Deputy Government Press Secretary with the last government between 2016 and 2020. 

She currently works with the Higher Education Authority as Senior Manager (Communications).

Marie Kierans has worked in the Irish media industry for almost 40 years. She started out in local journalism at the age of 17 and went on to work for both the Sunday World and the Irish Daily Mirror. She was the first female Editor of the Drogheda Independent and also wrote a weekly column for the Irish Sunday Mirror for nearly three years. In 2014 Marie took the leap from print journalism into radio and currently produces the Michael Reade Show on LMFM .

David Diebold is a former features and magazine editor (1999-2009) and opinion/analysis editor (2009-2011) at Independent News and Media. Since then, he has written for the Irish Independent, Irish Daily Mail, Business Post, and The Herald, in which he wrote a weekly column for almost seven years. He was a finalist at the National Newspapers of Ireland, for Feature Writer of the Year, in 2011, and at the NewsBrand Ireland Awards, for Popular Columnist of the Year, in 2016. His writing featured in Press Gang: Tales from the Glory Days of Irish Newspapers (2015), and he is the author of This Is How We Dance (2019), and Diary of a Wimpy Dad (2021). A regular guest on national radio, he has been on The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk), Ryan Tubridy Show, (RTE Radio 1), and Last Word (Today FM). He is now co-director of Monument Media Ltd, designers and publishers of books and magazines.

Donn O'Sullivan, a Limerick native, has been in the media industry for nearly 20 years. He has held roles across multiple titles, such as Newspaper Manager, Sports Editor and is currently the Managing Editor of the Limerick Leader, part of the Iconic Media Group.

Formerly a Sunday Times columnist and feature writer, Kathy Foley went on to work at both Twitter and Facebook. She now runs Hyphen, a content strategy and copywriting business with a blue-chip national and international client list.

Áine Kerr is the Co-Founder and COO of Kinzen; a technology company building products to help connect people with quality news and information.

Previously, Áine led global journalism partnerships at Facebook, overseeing a team in New York focused on building products, tools and services for journalists and news consumers. She was instrumental in helping to create the Facebook Journalism Project (FJP) and the News Integrity Initiative (NII).

Before Facebook, she spent five years at Storyful, and was appointed managing editor in December 2011 at the time of the company’s acquisition by News Corporation. Previously, Áine spent over seven years working as a political correspondent and news reporter with The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Irish Examiner.

Áine is an advisor to the Institute for Future of Media and Journalism (Fujo), the co-founder of Online News Association (ONA) Ireland and a Fellow of the Sulzberger Leadership Program in Columbia University, NYC. She is a member of the European Council's committee of experts on quality journalism in the digital age and the GovLab 100 Questions Initiative based out of New York University (NYU).

She was awarded Woman of the Year in Media at The Irish Tatler Awards in 2018 and received an Alumni Award from Dublin City University (DCU) in 2020. Áine is a frequent broadcaster on RTÉ and holds a Masters of Journalism with DCU.

Kieran is part of RTÉ's Investigations Unit and was the reporter on Stuck in the Rough, a programme about the challenges facing Dublin's roughsleepers. Before that he was part of Prime Time after starting out in RTÉ in March 2019 with Morning Ireland. 
Kieran is very proud to have been shortlisted 5 times for NewsBrands Ireland awards while with the Irish Sun - and regrets never winning the coveted trophy despite entering as many entries in as many categories as possible. 
He did manage to win two Justice Media Certificates of Merit, in 2017 and 2019, while working as the Irish Sun's Public Affairs Correspondent.
Before that, Kieran worked for the Irish Daily Mail as a reporter following a six-year stint in Cork's Echo, starting out as a sub-editor before becoming a reporter and Education Correspondent. Kieran studied Journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology and completed a Masters in Government in UCC.

Paddy Clancy is former Bureau Chief for The Irish Sun

Paddy Smyth is a former Washington and Brussels Correspondent of the Irish Times. He also served as the paper’s Foreign Editor and Chief Leader Writer,  and was national newspapers representative on the Press Council.

Tony O’Brien is the former award-winning Environment Correspondent of Independent Newspapers. He worked for 20 years for the group having started his journalism career with The People in his native Wexford.
Over the years, Tony covered many of the key emerging environment issues, including planning, transport, water, energy and local government. He was winner of the first Transport Journalist of the Year award presented by the Chartered Institute of Transport.
As well as a wide experience of national and local media, Tony has also forged a successful career in Public Relations working with clients such as Ticketmaster, Wicklow County Council, EirGrid, the Irish Planning Institute, Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance”, Wexford County Council and others.

Catriona Loughran is VP of Communications for Hurtigruten Group, one of the world's leading expedition cruise companies. 
She is based in Oslo, Norway. 
Catriona previously worked in various communications roles in the humanitarian sector: as Global Media Adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council and Media Relations Manager for Concern Worldwide. 
A journalist at heart, she worked for the Impartial Reporter newspaper in Co. Fermanagh before moving to the Irish Daily Star where she covered breaking news and entertainment.

Colette Sexton is a communications consultant with a background in journalism and politics. Prior to moving into communications, she worked as political correspondent with The Times, Ireland Edition and news correspondent for The Business Post. She edited the Media and Marketing section of the Business Post for years, and hosted its Media Matters podcast. She also worked as a sub-editor for The Irish Daily Mail and The Hull Daily Mail. Originally from Co. Clare, she holds a first class honours masters in journalism from NUI Galway and a first class honours degree in history and politics from the University of Limerick.

Gary O’ Shea worked for a range of Irish titles before moving to Fleet Street in 2002. He was a staff news reporter on The Sun from 2004-2020 before moving into PR and is now a Senior Director at the Rhizome Media Group specialising in finance and real estate.

Fiachra is a former journalist with the Irish Examiner and currently works for RTÉ News

Patrick Fagan started work subbing with the Irish Star in 2005 and moved to the Irish Sun in 2006, where he later became Head of Publishing and then Assistant Editor. He left newspapers in 2020 to take over a gourmet corner shop, and has found a sometimes reluctant new home for his puns on Instagram.

Having earned a BA Degree in Journalism and Media Communications, Rachael worked with The Irish Field newspaper before joining the Irish Daily Star, where she worked for over 10 years as a news reporter and features writer. Her claim to fame will always be a nomination for Scoop Of The Year for a story involving a live kangaroo on ecstasy in a Dublin nightclub.  
In 2018, Rachael joined Paddy Power as their PR and Mischief Champion

Declan Varley has been Group Editor of the Galway Advertiser since 2001. Prior to that, he worked as a senior journalist with the Tuam Herald where he won a European Regional Journalist Award in 1998. He has also won four Golden Quill Golden Dozen Awards for the excellence of his weekly editorials from the Internatioanal Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.