Shortlist for 2025 Mary Raftery Prize announced

The shortlist for the 2025 Mary Raftery Prize has been announced, with reporting Ireland’s nursing homes, female genital mutilation and the crackdown by HMRC, wrongly targeting Northern Irish families flying through Dublin Airport.

The prize is awarded annually by Dublin City University’s School of Communications to an individual or team responsible for social affairs journalism produced on the island of Ireland which combined rigorous analysis and commitment to social justice that characterised Mary Raftery’s journalism, and resulted in a significant impact on society.

It is named in memory of the late Mary Raftery, the groundbreaking journalist whose work resulted in the establishment of several government commissions of inquiry. Over the course of her career, Raftery tackled a range of social affairs issues from institutional abuse to property speculation, the drugs trade and environmental pollution.

Speaking about the prize, Prof. Mark O’Brien, DCU School of Communications and chair of Mary Raftery Prize judging panel said:

“In assessing this year’s nominations the judges observed that the quality of the work continues to indicate a strong public demand for factual, research-based investigative journalism that sheds light on injustice and the lack of transparency and fairness that often characterises Irish society.

They also commended the strong commitment of those involved in social affairs journalism and the high level analytical skills they bring to projects that address issues affecting society.”

Previous winners have included Irish Times journalists Naomi O’Leary, Colm Keena and Enda O’Dowd for their reporting on landlord Marc Godart, who evicted a tenant who had objected to CCTV surveillance in their home, The Journal’s podcast Redacted Lives, which was produced by Órla Ryan, Nicky Ryan and Sinéad O’Carroll and Calling Time, a Noteworthy investigation which revealed how the human rights of children of prisoners were not being fulfilled, written by Alice Chambers and Maria Delaney.

The winner of the 2025 prize will be announced at an event on Wednesday 25 March on DCU’s St Patrick’s campus.

The guest speaker at the event will be Paul Cullen. Paul is a journalist and the author of three acclaimed non-fiction books. He studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin in journalism at Dublin City University and joined The Irish Times in 1993, where he reported on health, politics, consumer affairs, international development, and education over a distinguished three-decade career.

He is the author of the best-selling With a Little Help from My Friends, which investigated corruption uncovered by the planning tribunal, and has won numerous awards for his work - including Irish News Journalist of the Year in 2023. Outsider: A Memoir of Survival, Family Secrets and the Search to Belong, has just been published and will be followed later the same year by his exposé of the Irish national children's hospital scandal Billion Dollar Baby.