Talk:Margaret Heffernan (Irish businesswoman)

Context / notability

For those readers and editors not familiar with the Dunne family and Irish business history, and given the family's longstanding secrecy, the early stages of the subject's career may be hard to trace - she started work at 14, and in her 20s was already driving much of the fashion buying for what was then still basically a drapery chain. Even when Ben jr. took over as CEO, she held a major portfolio, but quietly. At that point she was probably better known for her charity work, although she was running probably Ireland's largest clothing retail operation. She became more visible after she co-led the drive to oust her younger brother (with Frank Dunne, who mostly took a more passive role), and when Ben jr. fought back in the courts, before settling for a buyout, and more again when she took on the main drive for the whole company, most notably taking the drapery side upmarket, working with a range of designers and "names" and so on - so for this latter stage there is plenty of mention, enough for WP:BASIC. The subject was undoubtedly one of Ireland's most significant business players, male or female, from the early 1990s onwards. SeoR (talk) 08:17, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

SeoR Thanks very much for your good work in updating and expanding the article. After looking at Ben Dunne Jnr's article, I was surprised that his sister did not have one, so I decided to create it. After creating the initial article, I was taking the weekend off, and had planned to come back this week, to work on it again. I was surprised to see that it had already been AFD'd! Anyway, the nominator has kindly withdrawn the nomination, so all's well. Tx again, Spleodrach (talk) 22:02, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Spleodrach You're welcome, and I know the feeling. DGG is a very busy editor - I seem to recall a time when that one user was doing about 80% of all New Page Patrol work - and sometimes they can be quick with the tough love - aiming to ensure articles are strong enough to withstand challenges, but it's hard when you've just launched an article (we had a recent interaction, also positively resolved). In this case, it's not helped by the Dunnes' ferocious bent for secrecy; the Cork side of my family recalls the Dunnes' early days well, and this seems to have been a later development, driven by the subject of this article perhaps more than any other (the Iron Lady aka the Dentist was reputed to drop friends who over-shared, but to be fair never sought public credit for a lot of charitable work either). I remain amazed that this article was not present before, and I look forward to adding more. Meantime, have you considered logging it with the Women in Red Project? Good luck, SeoR (talk) 08:44, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

A picture would be nice too, but DS doesn't exactly do many appearances, especially not for the leadership - I don't think they even had a PR agency for their first 50+ years. There are places the family are known to pop up, but not sure anyone's likely to have captured a meal or seaside walk image. SeoR (talk) 08:55, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Good luck getting a free image of that publicity shy family! I have added the WIR wikiproject. Spleodrach (talk) 12:26, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Honorary Degrees

One learns something new every day, but I still think that the 2008 Sunday Times assertion at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/margaret-heffernan-czknz95kxqh that "she was awarded a second honorary doctorate" is an error. Only one honorary doctorate was mentioned when she became Business & Finance's Business Person of the Month for May 2018: https://businessandfinance.com/business-person-month-may-2018-margaret-heffernan-dunnes-stores/ The 2007 conferring of honorary degree by the Chancellor of the NUI, Dr Garret FitzGerald, took place at a ceremony in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/good-sport-independent-writer-honoured-26319795.html All Honorary Degrees Awarded by NUI and Its Member Institutions (including UCD) are listed at http://www.nui.ie/college/Honorary_Degree_Recipients.asp and she appears only once on the list. UCD has its own list, currently covering 2003-2019, at https://www.ucd.ie/president/about/universityawards/honorarydegrees/ and the only Heffernan on that list is Kevin; he also appears on the NUI list, which seems to include everyone on the UCD list. Back in 2006, there was some friction between UCD and NUI over the former going on a solo run and awarding honorary degrees without informing the NUI or its Chancellor (Irish Independent 1905-current, Wednesday, October 18, 2006; Section: Front Page). Unless someone can come up with a primary source and pre-2008 date for the award of the second doctorate, I think the reference should be removed from the Wikipedia article. I'm not sure of Wikipedia's strategy for stopping sloppy journalism in normally reliable newspapers from going viral. Pwaldron (talk) 13:36, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I agree. I've also searched on and found no evidence of any second degree anywhere, and can only suspect that the ST made a mistake, perhaps conflating mentions from both UCD and NUI sources of the same 2007 award. It is a difficult thing to override a normally-reliable source but I reviewed the same two lists, and see the same implication - however it is good to debate this here, as we have a RS saying one thing, and just our work questioning that (and it's hard to prove a negative - we're not going to find a report saying "Ms Heffernan has only one honorary degree"). SeoR (talk) 19:18, 18 September 2022 (UTC)