Morning Ireland celebrates 25 years

MORNING Ireland will celebrate its 25th anniversary this morning with the first broadcast of the entire programme in front of a live audience.

RTÉ Radio’s flagship current affairs programme will mark its quarter of a century on air with a nostalgic look back at its role in reporting key news events over the past 25 years.

An audience of 100 listeners who applied for tickets via the programme’s website will gather in the main studio at the Radio Centre in Montrose to celebrate the show’s silver anniversary.

In addition to the regular news updates, interviews and features as What It Says in the Papers, today’s show will look back over its 25-year history and some of its memorable moments.

However, the main emphasis of this morning’s edition will be a debate on the state of the nation in 2009 featuring a number of experts and analysts from the worlds of business, economic, sports and politics.

It is also expected that regular presenters Cathal MacCoille and Áine Lawlor will be joined in studio by some of Morning Ireland’s former hosts including David Hanley, David Davin Power and Richard Crowley.

Morning Ireland has consistently retained its position as the most popular radio programme among the nation’s listeners over most of its lifetime. According to the latest JNLR figures, the show attracts an average daily audience of 461,000 – a 6% increase over last year.

Looking ahead to today’s programme, presenter Cathal MacCoille said one of his stand-out memories was an interview with Sr Marianne O’Connor of the Conference of Religious in Ireland last May following the publication of the Ryan Report.

MacCoille recalled how the nun’s comments were “to say the least contentious” in how she was unwilling to re-open the possibility of further compensation to victims.

Áine Lawlor chose her favourite broadcast as the Christmas Eve edition in 1999 when leading political figures including Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and the leaders of the main political parties in Northern Ireland recounted one of the stories from the book, Lost Lives which documented the lives of every casualty of the Troubles.

* Morning Ireland will be broadcast as usual from 7am to 9am this morning on RTÉ Radio 1.