{"id":456705,"date":"2026-05-19T13:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/456705\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:40:15","slug":"patrick-odonovan-claims-he-was-dropped-from-interview-on-rte-with-minutes-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/456705\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick O’Donovan claims he was dropped from interview on RT\u00c9 with minutes’ notice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Communications minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan has claimed he was dropped from an interview with RT\u00c9<\/a>‘s Morning Ireland today with only a few minutes’ notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was due to be on RT\u00c9, but a minute to being on RT\u00c9, for some reason, I was declined,\u201d he told Newstalk Breakfast with Anton Savage.<\/p>\n

He said the public should know what everyone in RT\u00c9 is earning, which was why RT\u00c9 was \u201ccoming under\u201d the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG). This was being \u201ctaken care of today under the Broadcasting Amendment Bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m bringing forward proposals to have the C&AG appointed as the auditor. So I think that in many ways we’ll arrest an awful lot of these questions that continue to come up time in, time out,” said Mr O’Donovan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Why is it that the auditor didn’t see this, that, or the other thing?<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom now on, the members of the public accounts committee will have direct engagement with the auditor, who will be the C&AG.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And the Comptroller & Auditor General will on an annualised basis go to the accounts, present them and any outstanding issues and it’ll be up to the members of the public accounts committee then to dissect them, which should be the case for every penny of public money that’s been put, as I said a while ago.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Donovan is due to meet with RT\u00c9 bosses on Tuesday<\/a> amid further financial issues at the national broadcaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been down this road before, and here we are again,\u201d he said ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

It comes after RT\u00c9 confirmed on Thursday that it had revised its list of the top 10 highest-earning presenters for 2024 to include Derek Mooney after it \u201creconsidered what constitutes a presenter\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr O’Donovan said RT\u00c9 staff are \u201cvery aggrieved\u201d and said he had received anonymous correspondence from staff at RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of hurt in the organisation because people thought this is the end of it, and clearly it is not.\u201d He said there can not be a \u201cvacuum\u201d in the company and said they cannot have a \u201crelationship built on revelation\u201d.<\/p>\n

End to ‘drip-feeding’ of information<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on his way into Cabinet, Tan\u00e1iste Simon Harris said there needed to be an end to the drip feeding of information from RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need now is none of this drip feed, none of this will there be another revelation, no salacious detail, we just need facts, information and transparency. That is in the interest of public service broadcasting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"DirectorDirector General of RT\u00c9 Kevin Bakhurst. File Picture: Sam Boal\/Collins Photos <\/p>\n

“I believe it’s in the interest of RT\u00c9 and I believe it’s in the interest of fairness and transparency and I think the Broadcasting Bill by empowering the C&AG to have a role here will actually help strengthen RT\u00c9 in time and will help, I suppose, provide that assurance, that external assurance that I think is needed too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Harris added that there appears to be \u201can upstairs-downstairs\u201d situation in RT\u00c9 and that fairness and transparency were needed to ensure \u201cwe don\u2019t have Groundhog Day\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of hard work and decent people in RT\u00c9 who will feel let down by this latest set of revelations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to push to personalise it to anyone, because I think that serves no purpose, but it\u2019s beginning to look like there\u2019s a little bit of an upstairs-downstairs situation going on in RT\u00c9, that certain producers can be over here, and that\u2019s not fair. It\u2019s not fair in any organisation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Communications minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan has claimed he was dropped from an interview with RT\u00c9‘s Morning Ireland today with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,6085,70],"class_list":["post-456705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rte","tag-simon-harris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456705","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=456705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}