He was schooled at CBS Sexton St, and later graduated from University College Dublin with a BA in modern Irish and Latin.
[10] Goan assisted in the organisation of Mac Mathúna's music collection for the RTÉ Libraries and Archives.
[11] Mac Mathúna's long-running Sunday morning radio series Mo Cheol Thú (You are my music) began in 1970 and continued until November 2005, when he retired from broadcasting.
[2] Mac Mathúna won two Jacob's Awards, in 1969 and 1990, for his RTÉ Radio programmes promoting Irish traditional music.
[13] Joe Kennedy in the Sunday Independent in 2007 compared Mac Mathúna to "an amiable rock, rolling gently along, still picking up some moss and morsels of music that he may have missed".
[19] A billboard advertisement for Mo Cheol Thú with the caption “The Touch of the Master’s Hand’’ was positioned in Terenure College Chapel where his corpse was carried.
Mac Mathúna's funeral on 15 December 2009 was attended by hundreds of people, including aides-de-camp of the President and Taoiseach, RTÉ Director-General Cathal Goan, poet Séamus Heaney and others.
[24] Musicians to perform at the ceremony included Peadar Ó Ríada, Cór Cúil Aodha and members of The Chieftains and Planxty.