Senator counters calls for more RTÉ resignations

THE RESIGNATION of the chairman or the director general of RTÉ will do nothing to ensure the eradication of “group think” in the company, Independent Senator Rónán Mullen has said.

Mr Mullen said chairman Tom Savage and director general Noel Curran should “emphatically” not resign.

His comments came after some members of the Dáil called for the men’s resignation in the wake of the Fr Kevin Reynolds libel case.

The RTÉ programme Mission to Prey had made allegations about Fr Reynolds which were found to be untrue. The programme was investigated by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) and its report identified issues with “group think” in the organisation.

Mr Mullen said calls for the resignation of Mr Savage and Mr Curran showed a “PR approach to politics”. Such calls served to deflect attention away from the real issues involved, he said.

These were “the extent to which RTÉ, including its current chairman and director general, are committed to ensuring that the group think identified by the BAI report into RTÉ’s mishandling of the Fr Reynolds libel is eradicated”.

He said part of the commitment must be to investigate what constituted the mindset highlighted in the report and whether a culture of bias against Catholicism played a role.

“Resignations will do nothing to assure the public of such a commitment. They will only serve to perpetuate a PR circus empty of any concern for the quality of public service broadcasting, including investigative journalism,” Mr Mullen said.