LAST UPDATE | 19 Nov 2025

BROADCASTER IVAN YATES will tell TDs and senators at the Dáil’s media committee this evening that he is “flabbergasted” at the volume of attention his media training activities have received over the last few weeks. 

It emerged shortly after the election that Yates had coached Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin, while also co-hosting the independent Path to Power podcast and presenting shows on Newstalk during the presidential campaign.

Yates’s active involvement in Gavin’s campaign only emerged after the vote, but came after he attracted criticism for saying he would, if he were advising Fine Gael, “smear the bejaysus” out of winning candidate Catherine Connolly.

Yates, a former minister turned political pundit, was axed from the Path to Power podcast he co-presented with Matt Cooper after it was revealed he was involved with Gavin’s campaign.

Coimisiún na Meán is carrying out a review on the matter, with Newstalk, a radio station for which Yates also did some work for during the presidential campaign, also carrying out an internal review.

The committee will meet twice today to discuss impartiality and objectivity in the Irish media, following controversy over Yates’s role in Fianna Fáil’s presidential campaign.

He is due to appear before the media committee at 6.30pm this evening, while representatives from the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport and media regulator Coimisiún na Meán appeared before the same committee at 12.30pm today.

Representatives from Coimisiún na Méan told the committee at the outset that they could not speak specifically about the Ivan Yates affair, but that they could speak about the issues it raised in general terms.

They told members of the committee that podcasts in general are not covered by existing broadcasting legislation relating to fairness, objectivity and impartiality.

Podcasts that video record their offering and that meet other tests, e.g. they have revenue from news and current affairs that is over €2 million, are covered by the existing legislation, however. 

Committee chair, Labour TD Alan Kelly, noted that this is a significant gap in the law.

Coimisiún na Méan’s broadcasting and video on demand commissioner, Aoife Macevilly, told the committee that her organisation had “sufficient concerns” when the issues with Yates came to light, but that from Coimisiún na Méan’s perspective, the organisation is interested in whether Newstalk followed its obligations, not Yates.

 Yates told RTÉ last week that his role coaching Fianna Fáil’s Jim Gavin was subject to client confidentiality and claimed he “broke no rules” around his discussions of the election on the Path to Power podcast.

Disclaimers a ‘mood killer’

Sitting on the other side of the microphone later, the broadcaster is expected to tell committee members that media training has been “a small element of my commercial activities over the past number of years” and that media training for politicians “has been even smaller”.

“To be honest, I’m surprised at the level of surprise that my work in this area has generated,” Yates will say in his opening statement. 

He will say the second thing listed on his LinkedIn profile is media trainer and that as “most people know” that he is a former politician, it “hardly requires an enormous leap of imagination to think that I might have combined these interests at some point”.

Yates will tell politicians that he has been doing media training for about four years, “but importantly I was NOT doing it in any way when I was a full-time broadcaster with Newstalk Radio for about a decade between 2009 and 2020,” adding that he left full-time broadcasting five years ago. 

He will say that an attraction of political podcasts is that they take “a looser, less cautious, more contrarian approach to issues and allow voices to be heard that are increasingly hard to hear in the so-called mainstream media”. 

The contrast between his and Matt Cooper’s style on the Path to Power podcast would have been a “major attraction” for listeners, he will say. 

“A guaranteed mood-killer in that environment would have been if we had been forced to preface every debate with a disclaimer or a declaration of interests.  Thankfully we did not and I hope that burden is never placed on podcasters,” his statement says. 

‘Always acted in good faith’

Yates will tell the committee he has “always acted in good faith in discharging each individual role to the best of my ability” and that his commentary role is based on “my genuine independent opinions”. 

“I have never felt beholden to anyone because of other work,” he will say, adding that he believes his punditry during elections “were based solely on being as accurate and informative as possible”.

I don’t believe any training role altered the way I saw the election unfolding or the performance of the various candidates. 

The committee has invited Yates and the representatives to discuss Coimisiún na Meán’s code of fairness, objectivity and impartiality in the news and current affairs output of radio and television broadcasters.

The code includes obligations on broadcasters to implement procedures that would address any possible conflicts of interest with anyone who is involved in the production of any news or current affairs content.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this morning, Fianna Fáil TD and media committee member Malcolm Byrne said that Yates “was wrong” not to declare that he was providing media training to Jim Gavin.

He said anybody going on a television or radio programme or a podcast should declare their interests. 

“I do think that the public are entitled to know that if somebody was being paid to coach a particular candidate, or if they have a particular business interest, you are entitled to know that as a listener.”

Meanwhile, it was also revealed in today’s hearing that representatives from Coimisíun na Méan received communications training before appearing before the committee.

“I think it’s really important public officials that we’re able to communicate effectively, clearly, answer questions properly,” MacEvilly said.

MacEvilly said Coimisíun na Méan usually uses the Communications Clinic for communications training, but because that company was also invited to appear before the committee today, they felt it would not be appropriate to employ their services in this instance.

With reporting from Jane Matthews