No further probe into Frontline debate: Rabbitte

Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte hinted that further inquiries are unlikely into the production of RTÉ’s Frontline presidential debate and complaints by failed independent candidate Seán Gallagher.

Mr Gallagher’s legal team will advise the businessman today of fresh revelations concerning the alleged directing of a question from an audience member for the night of the debate.

His team will then make a formal submission to Mr Rabbitte, whose spokesman said he would not comment ahead of receiving the correspondence. Mr Rabbitte indicated yesterday further investigations, following a broadcasting watchdog inquiry, into the airing of the show were improbable.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Mariane Finucane show, he said he did not disagree with a point made that a further inquiry about the RTÉ show was unlikely and the matter was now closed.

“Some critics of RTÉ would like to see it turned into Fox News Irish-style, and I think for a public broadcaster there has to be balance; and as long as I’m around every view known to the history of philosophy has been represented in RTÉ and long may that prevail.”

Mr Gallagher yesterday raised questions about RTÉ and called for an inquiry after claims from audience member Pat McGuirk, 43, from Monaghan, that he was pressured to ask a question written for him by a researcher and aimed at “gunning down” the independent candidate.

Mr Gallagher’s further complaint follows a ruling by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland last week that the station made “no apparent efforts” to verify the accuracy of a tweet broadcast on Frontline, which some say helped crush his presidential campaign. The candidate’s former campaign manager, Donal Geoghegan, yesterday said that it seemed appropriate that there would be some form of inquiry.

The issue of the bogus text which pushed Mr Gallagher on the night of the debate to explain his links with Fianna Fáil needed to clarified further, he added.

“We should have further information of how it happened, the who, what, where, when. It seems very reasonable for there to be an inquiry of some sort.”

But RTÉ strongly defended its standards and procedures for programme staff.

Steve Carson, RTÉ’s acting director of current affairs, denied that a Frontline researcher had directed Mr McGuirk what to ask.

Numerous questions were discussed with the audience member in the week leading up to the debate, he said.

In a statement, RTÉ said: “The question of any further regulatory process around these matters is not a matter for RTÉ to decide or influence and RTÉ will continue to be subject to full statutory regulation in addition to its own internal governance and management.”