FRANK HENEGHAN, BORN 1931, FORMER PRINCIPAL/DIRECTOR, COLLEGE OF MUSIC/CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC AND DRAMA; DIRECTOR OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS DIT (Part 2)

Frank Heneghan was Principal/Director of the College of Music from 1973 – 1995. He discusses his background in Tralee, and his early education there. He graduated with an engineering degree from UCD in 1955, and following this he studied for a Music degree there and graduated two years later. He gained employment from 1957 – 1973 as a design engineer with Metropolitan-Vickers in Manchester, and then returned to Ireland where he took up the post of Principal of the College of Music. In this recording, he discusses the structural changes in the College in the 1980s, and the location of a section of the College to Adelaide Road. He discusses the full-time and part-time teachers individually, their work conditions, their teaching practices and their skills. He explains the systems employed by the NUI and by DIT in awarding degrees in earlier days. In 1979 a Joint Committee was established with the aim of bringing together the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Dublin College of Music, and Frank Heneghan explains why this did not succeed. In the second section of the recording, Frank Heneghan outlines the background to music education in Ireland in general. He has a passion for the promotion of music as a subject, and discusses its establishment as a third level subject in the 1980s. He recalls his involvement in bringing in foreign music educators to the College of Music in the 1980s, and he discusses the evolution of the DCVEC until its designation as DIT in 1993. Frank Heneghan retired from the College of Music in 1996 and became Director of Cultural Affairs at DIT.