RTÉ news anchor Bryan Dobson said yesterday the way in which he would interview health board chief executives on television would not be affected "one iota" by the fact that he had trained them on how to deal with such interviews.
He said it was possible he could end up asking the executives similar questions to ones they had been put through during mock interviews with him in March, but stressed "the issues could have changed in the meantime".
"What I do is transparent. Viewers can make up their own minds on whether I do a good job interviewing them or not. This would not change my attitude to how I would deal with them one iota," he said.
He said it was "fairly exceptional" for him to be involved in such training exercises. He explained that he had been asked to do mock interviews with the CEOs for "a couple of days" last March.
"I don't know if that counts as media training or not," he said. "I don't normally do it at all".
He was not part of the Promedia company that provided the training, he added.
An RTÉ spokeswoman said staff had to get the station's approval before engaging in media training.
This would have happened in this case, she said, and the station was confident that Dobson would deal with any health board chief executive whom he might have to interview in his "usual professional and neutral manner".