Bringing it all back home

When Padraig McKeon was in secondary school, he had his sights set on working in the media. He read in a handbook in the library that a journalist is “someone who knows something about everything, but not everything about anything”, so he thought he was the perfect fit. “I’m terribly curious,” he says.

“You could say something to me on this phone call that piques my interest and I’ll end up researching stuff online for half an hour. I can take an interest at a high level and I want to be able to converse about different things”.

It transpires during the course of our interview that he probably does know ‘everything about anything’ which explains why he didn’t opt for journalism in the end. The Sligo native’s thirst for knowledge and love of communicating ultimately took him into public relations.

In 1986, he graduated from DCU with a degree in communications and started working with the Murray Group for €3,500 a year after handing in his dissertation. He later went on to work for leading Irish PR firm Drury Communications. He was appointed director in 1997 and served as managing director between 2003 and 2010.

 

“When I talk about communications I don’t just see it as the media. A substantial part is media relations, but over the years it has become a much more diverse and more useful trade that feeds into people and organisations in many different ways. Ultimately it’s about helping people”.

McKeon says the Covid-19 pandemic has shown to the world just how vital good communication is. “Without good quality communication, you wouldn’t get people to go for vaccines. Many things are oiled by communications.

All the parts of society need to move around it fluidly in order for it to work.” With over 30 years’ experience in the industry, McKeon is without doubt an expert in his field. He has been re-elected to serve a second two- year term as President of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland and also lectures on the MSc in Public Relations and Strategic Communications at DCU.

His work with alumni relations and as a lecturer is his way of giving back to a university which gave him so much. “DCU was where the real me emerged. I like the spirit of the place. There is a sense, and I know it was an ad line, but you really can go anywhere from here. There was a genuine sense the world was our oyster. I never had a sense that I couldn’t do what I wanted or go where I wanted.

The silly late night conversations you have with intelligent people from all walks of life, they were the ones that were the making of me.”