For as long as audiences find ventriloquists entertaining, our politicians will never be out of work. Their talent for speaking not only out one side of their mouths but out both sides simultaneously truly is a wonder to behold. And, by golly, did we behold it on Tuesday night when a marathon Oireachtas committee interrogation of Minister for Media Catherine Martin produced a virtuoso performance of political doublespeak.
The State’s public-service broadcaster is swirling crazily in the rapids of unprecedented scandals, at risk of capsizing and being swept away. The Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media is rightly concerned and demanding “full transparency” from RTÉ.
But when the Minister appeared before them, the committee members accused her of being too transparent altogether. The 3½-hour encounter in committee room two boiled down to one question for Martin: What on earth possessed you to go on the telly and tell everyone the truth?
Martin was summoned by the committee after she refrained on Prime Time from expressing confidence in RTÉ’s chairwoman, Siún Ní Raghallaigh. This was followed within hours by the latter’s resignation.
It has since transpired that the former chairwoman had repeatedly and incorrectly assured the Minister during meetings on Monday and Wednesday last week that she and the RTÉ board had played no role in rubber-stamping goodbye deals worth hundreds of thousands of euro to the broadcaster’s former director of strategy, Rory Coveney, and financial director Richard Collins.
Thus, on Monday evening, Martin had unwittingly misinformed journalists at a press conference that the board was uninvolved in the........