RTÉ SAYS it is bound by the terms of an out-of-court settlement from disclosing the libel payment it made to Fr Kevin Reynolds.
Fianna Fáil communications spokesman Éamon Ó Cuív has criticised RTÉ for agreeing to such a settlement and says it will eventually have to be made public.
Mr Ó Cuív said the money to pay Fr Reynolds, who was wrongly accused of raping a minor in Kenya and fathering a child by her, will ultimately come from TV licence-payers. He maintained the figure reported in the press of between €750,000 and €5 million was so large it could not be hidden.
“It’s the public’s money,” he said. “If this settlement is anything close to what is rumoured, it will stand out in the accounts as a clear, one-off exceptional item.”
In a statement, RTÉ responded saying it was bound by a confidentiality agreement “at the request of his legal representatives and will not breach this agreement”.
Mr Ó Cuív said the legal advice given to the makers of the Prime Time Investigates programme, on which the allegations were broadcast, should also be made public.
If legal advice had been given not to go ahead with the programme and that advice had been ignored, it amounted to a “reckless disregard” for the truth. He maintained the whole programme asked serious questions about corporate governance at RTÉ.
He described the harm done to Fr Reynolds as “very, very serious” and said statements from RTÉ that nobody would be sacked as a result of the libel underestimated the seriousness of what had happened.
Independent Senator Rónán Mullen also criticised the presumption that nobody would be sacked ahead of an internal review of how the programme was broadcast.
“Whatever about the ultimate appropriateness of dismissals in this case, it seems inappropriate that such an indication would be given in advance of any thorough investigation and without reference to any disciplinary process.”
Mr Mullen said RTÉ should be brought in front of the Oireachtas committee on communications, not just its director-general Noel Curran, but also those directly involved in making the programme, including reporter Aoife Kavanagh, executive producer Brian Páircéir and Prime Timeeditor Ken O'Shea.
Both Mr Mullen and the Association of Catholic Priests said there was a perception of a widespread anti-Catholic bias both in RTÉ and in the media in general. The association said priests were reluctant to speak up on the issue of clerical sex abuse because it might be perceived that it was adding to the suffering of the genuinely abused and also because it felt it would not get a fair hearing.
RTÉ staff will attend a meeting of the NUJ Dublin broadcasting branch tomorrow amid concerns that Kavanagh is being singled out as a scapegoat when many people were involved in the making of the programme.