Tánaiste stays quiet on whether Rabbitte should apologise after court settlement

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore would not comment on whether Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte should apologise to RTÉ licence-fee payers after the broadcaster reached a settlement out of court for comments he made on air.

A libel action taken by a retired garda was due to begin last Tuesday, but was settled out of court without RTÉ admitting any wrongdoing, in an agreement reported to have cost the broadcaster €100,000.

The case related to comments made in 2006 by the then leader of the Labour Party, who was on radio to discuss the findings of the Morris report into Garda corruption in Donegal.

He is understood to have made comments about detectives in the Bridewell Garda Station in Dublin.

The discussion took place one week after the leaking of the Birmingham report into the Dean Lyons affair in which the Dublin man was wrongfully charged with the murder of two psychiatric patients in Dublin’s Grangegorman Hospital in 1997.

The case against RTÉ was being taken by retired detective sergeant Alan Bailey who served in the Bridewell Garda Station for more than 30 years.

He was one of three gardaí who had expressed misgivings prior to Dean Lyons being charged and was fully exonerated by the report.

The settlement was reached in the same week that Mr Rabbitte criticised RTÉ following a report on the libelling of Fr Kevin Reynolds by a Prime Time Investigates programme.

Asked yesterday if the minister owed RTÉ or the licence fee payer an apology, Mr Gilmore said: “As I understand, that case was settled by RTÉ and I’m sure RTÉ had its own reasons for settling the case.”