'It's been a tough time': Ryan Tubridy speaks about losing four colleagues in a few months

It has been a difficult few months in RTÉ following the deaths of four award-winning broadcasters, Ryan Tubridy has revealed.

Recent months have seen the passing of Gay Byrne, Marian Finucane and Larry Gogan. Keelin Shanley is due to be buried tomorrow after she passed away at the weekend.

The much-loved journalist and anchor of the Six One News had been battling cancer for some time.

She joined RTÉ in 1999, and her work on Prime Time won her three IFTA awards, a National Media Award, a Radharc award and a Justice Media Award.

In an interview with University College Cork’s student radio 98.3 FM, Ryan Tubridy said it has been a “very strange time” following their deaths.

Gay Byrne was such a massive figure in Irish broadcasting as well as a colleague, he told students.

“Larry was also a friend of ours. Marian Finucane, I didn't know as well but she was without question a wonderful colleague.”

We're very, very close [in RTÉ] and when somebody goes from the broader family, it's very, very sad. It’s difficult, it's been a tough time.

He added: “It's very strange to have four people who you'd be passing by in the corridor pretty much every other day suddenly not being there.”

“I think it's difficult for the listeners to lose people whose voices they loved and trusted,” he said, adding that it is also obviously very difficult for the families of his late colleagues.

“Particularly Kealan, she was 51 she had kids.”

Meanwhile, the Late Late Show host also said he was surprised by the results of the general election as just 1% of voters said they saw Brexit as a key issue.

"I think that suggests that the media kind of misread what people are interested in.

We all know Brexit is important but actually, the biggest lesson I think, in some ways is that people are fed up not being heard when it comes to the opportunity to own a house, dream to own a house, or at the very least, have a rental property that isn't completely disgraceful to what you can afford.