Joanna Donnelly on her childhood: I made many outfits I wore on RTÉ — mam taught me

Meteorologist and author says she learned the value of money from her mother and has raised her children to appreciate what they have

Joanna Donnelly's mother Marie with Joanna, her brothers Alan and William and her father Frank. The picture was taken in 1974, shortly before Frank died.

Joanna Donnelly’s mother, Marie, gave her a gift before she died. It was 2021. Covid restrictions were in place, and her mother was due for surgery.

“I wasn’t allowed into the hospital, so we were in the car outside, chatting about my father,” says the meteorologist, author, and former RTÉ weather presenter.

“That was unusual because mam rarely spoke about him. His death was too painful for her.”

Donnelly’s father, Frank, was 32 when he fell off a roof and sustained a serious head injury on June 26, 1974. He died five days later.

Donnelly was only three at the time, which left her with few memories of him. One was of him playing with the family’s pet rabbit.

“I remembered another one day when my niece was sitting on the doorstep putting on her shoes,” she says. “I told her that her shoes were on the wrong feet. I suddenly recalled my father saying those same words to me as I sat on the doorstep of my grandparents’ house.”

She also had a hazy recollection of picking blackberries with her father, but they were in a part of Finglas that the family didn’t move to until after her father died. Donnelly wonders how they could have been in that place at that time: “I only had three memories of dad, and questioning that one made me question them all.”

Joanna Donnelly: ‘My kids know that having enough money isn’t about fancy holidays in Dubai but being able to feed your family.’ Picture: Moya Nolan

In the car outside the hospital that morning, her mother explained that they had visited family in that area of Finglas when her father was alive. Having her memory confirmed was “huge” for Donnelly, and because her mother died following that surgery, she considers the memory “her parting gift”.

Donnelly was sent to school the September after her father died, when she was not yet four.

“I’ve been told I was precocious, which I take to mean smart for my age but a handful,” she says. “Mam probably needed a break.”

She found it hard to sit still at school, so the teachers gave her knitting to do to keep her occupied. She jokes that “the whole classroom ended up filled with knitted items”.

Maths was the one subject that enthralled her, but she had no patience with those who weren’t as mathematically inclined as she was. She would even “give out to teachers if they got a problem wrong” and was suspended a few times as a result.

Outside of school, Finglas in the 1970s was still relatively rural. She, her three brothers and their friends would spend hours playing in the fields of the Tolka Valley and fishing in the river.

Her freedom was reined in when she became a teenager. Donnelly says she and her friends were “watched like hawks, even though we weren’t remotely bold girls. 

My brothers, on the other hand, didn’t have to obey the same rules.

Donnelly’s mother was one of the biggest influences on her life: “She was brainy but had to leave school at 13 to work as a seamstress.

“When she was 22 and pregnant with her first child, her mother died of a brain aneurism and she had to look after her nine siblings, the youngest of whom was six. Eight years later, when she was expecting her fourth child, her husband died. How devastating it must have been to lose her mother and her husband and end up responsible for so many kids.”

To earn money, her mother took in sewing using an industrial sewing machine placed in the corner of their living room. She taught Donnelly to sew on it.

“I remember her making me rip out hems that weren’t straight,” she says.

Joanna Donnelly, with her brothers Alan, Emmet and William.

There was never enough money, and the family was often hungry. Donnelly recalls a conversation she once had at college about not having a pillow on her bed as a child: “Someone said that was ridiculous because pillows weren’t expensive. But they were more expensive than potatoes. Poverty is about choices, and you always choose food.”

Her mother didn’t want Donnelly living this way. She always encouraged her to do well at school so that she could get a good job.

However, although Donnelly’s interest in maths had continued and she enjoyed chemistry and physics, she wasn’t very committed to her studies.

“My school reports consistently said I could do better,” she says. “But all I cared about was being number one. Everyone else was getting Ds, so my thinking was: Why try for an A when a C will do me?”

She got the four honours she needed to qualify for a grant to study maths at Dublin City University and moved out of home during her final year of college. She was 20 and told her mother she needed “peace and quiet to study” and would be back once the exams were over.

Passing on values

“But I knew that wasn’t true,” she says. “I wanted to go. With three brothers, it felt like that small house was full of men, and my mother and I were expected to clean up after them.”

Donnelly now has a daughter and two sons, aged 22, 18, and 16, and has tried to pass the values of her childhood on to them.

“I wanted them to know the value of money,” she says. “We’ve never had arguments about money in our house, as I know how stressful money worries can be for children, but we do talk about the importance of having the financial independence to look after yourself.

“My kids know that having enough money isn’t about fancy holidays in Dubai but being able to feed your family, heat your home, and live a comfortable life.”

Being able to knit and sew also helps.

“It might surprise people to realise I made many outfits I wore on RTÉ,” says Donnelly.

“Mam taught me, and I taught my three kids.”