The MacGill Summer School has been in existence for thirty years. It was founded in 1981 in Glenties in Co. Donegal to celebrate the memory of local writer, Patrick MacGill, whose books in the first decades of the twentieth century on the social conditions in Donegal, the plight of migrant workers in Britain and the horrors of the Great War in which he fought as a soldier of the London Irish Rifles are still being published.
The school has grown over three decades from very modest beginnings to being one of the most important fora for the analysis of topics of national and international interest and has consistently been a source of innovative and fresh thinking on a whole range of social, economic and political ideas. It brings together every July, government ministers, members of the opposition parties, heads of industry, economists, sociologists, church leaders, members of the judiciary and public representatives from Northern Ireland.
In many ways, the MacGill School is unique. For one week every year, the picturesque village of Glenties, nestling in the Donegal hills and close to the Atlantic, becomes a major centre of debate as people from all walks of life and all shades of politics get together and discuss ways in which Ireland could be a better place. The attraction of MacGill is that anyone, for a few euros, can walk in and listen to major public figures and ask questions and propose answers. Hallmarks of the school are its complete impartiality, rigour and objectivity as well as the fact that it has become, in the words of Irish Times journalist, Mark Hennessy, “a holiday for the mind” for everyone who either contributes to it or participates in it at the beginning of the summer recess.
The school’s proceedings receive wide and extensive coverage on radio, television and in the press and, in 2009, through the collaboration of Donegal Co Council, the proceedings were broadcast on the web and interest was expressed by journalists from as far away as Hong Kong and Singapore. It is planned, with the involvement of the national broadcasting organisation, RTE, to develop further this distribution in 2010.
The MacGill School has honoured artists and writers during their lifetime including Peadar O’Donnell, Derek Hill, T.P. Flanagan, Liam McCormick and, of course, the distinguished playwright, Brian Friel, much of whose work has been inspired by his close relationship with Donegal. In 2008, the week was given over to celebrating Friel’s life and work with talks, documentaries, readings and performances of his plays including Faith Healer, Making History and Translations. Some events of the week were brought to the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris in the summer of 2009.
The Director of the MacGill for most of its thirty years has been Dr Joe Mulholland who, with a local committee, founded the school in 1981. He was named Donegal Person of the Year in 2009