dropped as co-host of a political podcast due to failing to disclose his work with Mr Gavin<\/a>.<\/p>\nMr Yates has declined to comment when contacted.<\/p>\n
Mr Shatter has called on the Taoiseach to reveal why the connection was not revealed before polling day.<\/p>\n
Mr Shatter says that Mr Martin had an obligation to ensure the public were fully informed.<\/p>\n
He added that Fine Gael was wrongly accused of smearing president-elect Catherine Connolly on the back of comments from Mr Yates.<\/p>\n
In a statement this afternoon, a spokesperson for Fianna F\u00e1il said: “As a matter of policy, the party does not confirm the existence or otherwise of any relationships with suppliers or contractors.”<\/p>\n
Questions to answer<\/p>\n
Minister of State for Migration Colm Brophy said Fianna F\u00e1il had questions to answer, but he added that the communications regulator may also have to examine the broadcasting work that Mr Yates did during the election campaign.<\/p>\n
“We have regulations around fairness and impartiality that affect broadcasters,” Mr Brophy said.<\/p>\n
“And we need to look at the work which Ivan Yates did and the comments he was making, which will be made in the context of someone who was involved in campaign which nobody listening at the time knew.<\/p>\n
“And I think that’s something that a number of broadcasters and maybe the regulator will need to look at.”<\/p>\n
He said that if Mr Yates was not declaring his involvement to broadcasters, then that raised serious questions.<\/p>\n
Mr Brophy also said that it was amazing that nobody from Fianna F\u00e1il declared the connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Fine Gael minister Alan Shatter has called on Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin to clarify the extent of Ivan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-117923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}