Yates claims Nphet is past its sell-by date and is treating people like sheep
Former broadcaster Ivan Yates has set up a media training course. Picture: Brian McEvoy
Nphet is past its sell-by date and has been treating the public like sheep, former minister and broadcaster Ivan Yates believes.
Mr Yates believes the country has been unnecessarily subjected to the most extreme lockdown in Europe for the past 18 months.
“Nphet is past its sell-by date. There is no need for such a large and unwieldy group. While they were on holidays, things got on fine,” he told the .
“I am also very cynical that we are the only country that treats the public like sheep. They publish on a daily basis the number of cases, the number of hospitalisations, but because of some cyberattacks a number of months ago they can’t publish the deaths. The truth is it is because the numbers are zero or close to zero and they don’t want people to know the truth."
Describing himself as “anti-lockdown”, Mr Yates says until we move the national debate beyond public health considerations, the country is “going nowhere and we will remain an outlier in Europe”.
Mr Yates says a significant double standard was applied as to how former minister for agriculture Dara Calleary was treated after Golfgate and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar in the wake of the Merrion Hotel gathering.
While Mr Calleary was forced to resign within 12 hours of the revealing the event, Mr Varadkar was able to survive after having sought assurances from Katherine Zappone who hosted the event and the hotel itself that it was in line with the rules.
Mr Yates says Mr Calleary was forced out because of “mob rule”.
“So here we have it a year later in identical circumstances you have double standards. In one case, it was okay to have an alibi of approval in the case of Mr Varadkar and in the other it was not,” he says.
Mr Yates says there was a hysterical response to Golfgate and condemns the joint statement from Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar in the wake of the event in relation to European commissioner Phil Hogan, which he says was “not their finest hour”. That statement left little room for Mr Hogan to survive, he says.
Mr Yates also says while he personally likes Mr Martin, his biggest failing as leader is his indecision.
In what is a case of poacher turned gamekeeper, Yates is launching his new venture, MediaMasterclass.ie, which is his vehicle for him to share his expertise in dealing with the media.
Part of the course is an examination of car-crash and career-ending interviews such as former Fine Gael TD Maria Bailey’s poor outing on Sean O’Rourke's RTÉ programme in 2019, as well as examining the circumstances around ‘Golfgate’.
He says the key thing when a politician makes a mistake is to walk it back and retract it swiftly within a matter of hours if saving your job is to be possible.
Having said he was done with the public spotlight, Mr Yates formally retired from Newstalk radio show and his presenting slot on Virgin Media’s last year.
He says he “was bored out of his tree” during the lockdown and couldn't stay retired.
Hence, he devised his new venture which seeks to offer one-day media training courses to people in business, communications and politics, hence his re-emergence to public life.
“I was bored out of my tree so I used the lockdown to write 18,000 words, which is the basis of the course, with test runs amongst media professionals,” he says.
