The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, is contemplating legal action arising from personal commends made by journalist Nell McCafferty on Newstalk last week.
A spokesman for Ms Harney confirmed today that the “matter is the hands of her lawyers”.
His comments were seen as confirmation that Ms Harney, who is currently, in New Zealand of is actively considering suing the station and Ms McCafferty for defamation.
Ms McCafferty made the comments during Tom Dunne’s show on Thursday morning.
She later said she thought she was off-air at the time and only realised later that her comments were being broadcast live.
The station has issued two separate apologies, accepting that it had made an “abject failure” in allowing the allegations to be broadcast.
“Each and every one of these allegations were untrue and were known to be without truth when they were broadcast,” the station said in a statement.