IRELAND
The Irish Times

PAMELA DUNCAN

REACTION: MINISTER FOR Communications Pat Rabbitte has described the RTÉ documentary A Mission to Prey that defamed Fr Kevin Reynolds as a “shoddy, unprofessional, cavalier, damaging piece of work”.

Speaking on the RTÉ News last night after the publication of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) report, Mr Rabbitte said it posed a fundamental challenge to RTÉ to re-establish its reputation and to rebuild the trust it has had with the Irish people.

“It is quite disturbing that a man’s character could have been traduced in such a cavalier fashion,” he said. It was “beyond belief” that a programme that had won such a high reputation for its investigative journalism “should put together a piece of work based on frankly no more than uncorroborated gossip”.