Respected media lawyer Paula Mullooly has landed the top legal job at the national broadcaster.

Mullooly has stepped into the Director of Legal Affairs role at RTÉ, where she has also been appointed group secretary. She will lead a team of seven lawyers at the national broadcaster.

She replaces long-standing legal lead Eamonn Kennedy, who has been in the job since 1995 and has moved on to new projects.

Litigation

A Trinity law graduate, Paula has deep experience in media law. As a partner in Simon McAleese and Co (2002-2013) she acted as legal counsel to Independent News and Media, in a time of numerous high-profile legal actions against the newspaper publisher.

More recently, Mullooly has been a senior knowledge lawyer in the litigation and dispute resolution department at A&L Goodbody.

She acted as chair of the Censorship of Publications Appeals Board from 2004-2012 and was until last year a member of the compliance committee at the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

Roscommon native Mullooly has also lectured in media law at Independent Colleges.

Challenges

The national broadcaster is in a period of transition and faces challenges in maintaining audiences as younger people abandon scheduled programming in favour of on-demand media consumption.

Mullooly told Gazette.ie that the role is a very exciting opportunity.

“There is an excellent legal team in situ in RTE and I am very much looking forward to working with them.

“Media law and media lawyers have to constantly evolve to deal with new issues and new technologies and I very much welcome the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead,” she said.