Geraldine Kennedy

In August 2012, she was appointed Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University of Limerick. She has been awarded five honorary doctorates from Irish universities.

Kennedy announced on 12 March 2011 her intention to retire from The Irish Times by September, after a nine-year term as editor. She actually retired in June, and was succeeded by news editor, Kevin O'Sullivan, who succeeded her as editor on 23 June 2011.

In September 2006, Kennedy approved the publication of an article in The Irish Times giving confidential details of investigations being made into payments purported to have been made in 1993 to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Kennedy refused, upon request of the investigating Tribunal, to provide details of the source of the printed information. She responded that the documents had since been destroyed. Her refusal caused the Tribunal to seek High Court orders compelling her to provide details of the source. On 23 October 2007, the High Court granted the orders compelling her to go before the Tribunal and answer all questions. In its judgment, the High Court, criticising her decision to destroy the documents, said it was an "astounding and flagrant disregard of the rule of law". In 2009, however, the Supreme Court overturned this ruling, holding that the High Court had not struck the correct balance between the journalists’ right to protect their source and the tribunal's right to confidentiality.

Following her election defeat, Kennedy returned to The Irish Times, then edited by Conor Brady, whom she had worked with at the Tribune when he was the editor. She avoided party-political journalism for several years, but she returned to covering politics in the early 1990s, and became The Irish Times' political editor in 1999. She became the newspaper's first female editor upon the departure of Conor Brady in late 2002. One of her rivals for the editor's chair was the paper's high-profile columnist, Fintan O'Toole.

She stood again in the 1989 general election and won 9% of the first-preference vote but failed to retain her seat.

Early in 1987, Kennedy successfully sued the incumbent Charles Haughey-led Fianna Fáil government for illegally tapping her phone.

Kennedy stood in the 1987 general election as a candidate for the newly formed Progressive Democrat party in Dún Laoghaire. She came third in the poll, winning 9.4% of the first-preference vote. She was one of fourteen Progressive Democrat TDs elected to Dáil Éireann in that election — a feat the party never achieved again. Kennedy was appointed the party's spokesperson for foreign affairs.

In 1982, Kennedy's telephone, along with those of two other journalists, was tapped by former Minister for Justice Seán Doherty. The revelation in 1992 that Charles Haughey had ordered the phone taps led to Haughey's resignation as Taoiseach.

On the foundation of the Sunday Tribune in 1980, Kennedy joined it as the paper's political correspondent. The paper's publisher, John Mulcahy, had become familiar with Kennedy when she had contributed to his journal Hibernia. When the Tribune briefly ceased production, Kennedy moved to the Sunday Press.

Geraldine Kennedy (born 1 September 1951) is an Irish journalist and politician who served as the first female editor of The Irish Times newspaper. She previously served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 1987 to 1989.