There was good news for Communicorp chairwoman Lucy Gaffney this week as she was named as the 19th most powerful woman in Irish business by the Sunday Independent, which reckoned she was slightly more powerful than 21st- placed Riverdance entrepreneur and RTÉ chairwoman Moya Doherty.

The bad news for Gaffney is that this represented a fall of 10 places on a similar run-down by the Independent News & Media (INM) title last year. In the 2014 rankings, her ninth spot just edged Cathy Kearney, Apple's vice-president of European operations, into 10th.

Most powerful woman in radio

Gaffney, hailed last year as “the most powerful woman in Irish media”, is this year described as “the most powerful woman in radio”. This refers to her role chairing Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp empire, which is run by another woman, chief executive

Gervaise Slowey

. Between this year’s and last year’s

Sindo

rankings, of course, Gaffney stepped down as a board member of INM, which is 29.9 per cent owned by O’Brien.

Helen Dixon, data protection commissioner, topped the list.