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Pat Rabbitte speaking to the media this morning. Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland
RTÉ
No resignations from RTÉ board after meeting with Rabbitte
The Communications Minister met with the board of the State broadcaster this morning following the publication of the BAI’s report into the Mission to Prey programme last week.
10.44am, 8 May 2012
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COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER PAT Rabbitte has said that there were no resignations sought or offered by the board of RTÉ this morning following a meeting in the wake of the BAI’s report into the Mission to Prey programme.
RTÉ said that Rabbitte had indicated there should be no changes on the board following the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s report into the Prime Time Investigates programme which libelled Fr Kevin Reynolds.
According to RTÉ Radio, Rabbitte said that he was was satisfied that the board fully appreciates the seriousness of the situation and said that no excuses were offered during the meeting this morning which lasted over two hours.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting he described the Mission to Prey programme as an “egregious error”. Quoted on RTÉ Radio, he said there was “no attempt by the board of RTÉ to defend what happened”.
“The chairman described it as inexplicable and indefensible and some other members of the board used a lot stronger terms. I’m satisfied that the board fully appreciates the seriousness of what has happened,” he said.
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“The board attempted to offer no excuse for what happened. The board accepts that it ought not to have happened and that it did damage not just to the reputation of Fr Reynolds but did damage to the reputation of RTÉ.”
Rabbitte had called the meeting in the wake of the BAI’s findings that RTÉ had breached the broadcasting code in its production of a programme which defamed Fr Reynolds. RTÉ later retracted and apologised for allegations made as well as paying damages to the priest.
The State broadcaster was fined €200,000 by the authority with the reporter who worked on the story, Aoife Kavanagh, resigning from RTÉ following the report’s publication.
As well as axing the new Prime Time Investigates format, new journalism guidelines were introduced at the station. RTÉ said on Friday that “a great deal has changed in recent months” and pledged that “more will change as we embed the new structures”.
On top of Kavanagh’s departure, programme makers Brian Pairceir and Ken O’Shea were transferred out of the news and current affairs department in RTÉ while producer Mark Lappin now works for CNN in London. The former Head of News, Ed Mulhall, took a retirement package.
Following the publication of the report carried out by former BBC executive Anna Carragher on Friday, Rabbitte described the Mission to Prey programme as “a shoddy, unprofessional, cavalier, and damaging piece of work”.
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@Gerard O’Brien: so assuming 53e a month for broadband and 12 hour outage against approx 730hrs in the month, that means a customer can expect around 88cents off their bill :)
It’s an outage, they do happen. They don’t guarantee 100% uptime.
Any somewhat tech savy person just changed their dns servers…. Anyone worth their salt wasn’t using the eir dns servers to begin with.
@Barry Somers: your last sentence is the most important one, but would be quite rightly lost on vast majority of people, who should really need to do it in the first place.
@Karl Curtin: In case there’s any confusion, Karl means use Google’s Public DNS server rather that search Google for Public DNS Server. Many reputable tech sites have lists of the best DNS servers which can keep you safe online, or help get around blocks on certain sites, etc. But some DNS servers are malicious in that they can actually redirect you to phishing sites. Like with everything else you do online, be careful with the services you use.
@Dave O Keeffe: they could of kept customers updated on their FB page. That seemed to be one of the only social media networks that was still working for eir customers yesterday!
I was 24 minutes on hold listening to silly recordings when I was cut off after being told there was a problem connecting to call centre.
Could they not have left recording telling us of the problem
A couple of hours? Hmmm lets see wifi lost at 2:30pm Sat (roughly) & restored at 2:30 Sun morning…. by my crude calculations thats 12hrs not 2/3hrs.
The situation was not helped by the fact their own website was completely down, as it seems also were their customer care lines. Twitter helps knocks off at 5pm (no help) & Facebook help hid in a corner.
@Rhona Quinn: it’s not surprising if customer care was unavailable. A system can only handle so many calls at once, there’s ports for live calls and some reserved for calls in the queue. It can’t fill up forever, and while its frustrating to have your call rejected outright, that’s better than being in a 1-2hr queue hearing how about how important your call is to them every 30 seconds.
Internet forums are the best place to get answers in this scenario, no point in being caller #3456 in the queue to tell their engineers what the already know, that their system is down. They won’t give you workarounds out of their policy, and venting won’t make you feel any better. If you’re unhappy vote with your feet at the next renewal.
Businesses including restaurants, takeaways at shop or online couldn’t use credit card services. Some bank machines were reported down. Companies and self employed that use such machines as “Sumup” were unable to gain payments.
Will any of these gain compensation? Like hell they will! Their fault could have others serious amounts of money.
I have to say in 2 years that’s the first time eir broadband has crashed on me. I find the service excellent. It even withstood storm Ophelia. I don’t hear people demanding a rebate from their electricity bill after the power has been down for a day etc These things happen, and not very often thankfully
Adults on here (aside from those genuinely affected via business issues) need to take a grip. We wonder about our children’s issues and problems with screens, social media etc, Where do they take their lead from? Us! Missing tv, social media interactions etc etc seems to have caused a crisis in some homes. It was a Saturday, it was a few hours, problems DO happen with service providers. Get over it.
The worst company I have ever had to deal with . Trained monkeys would do a better job . This is definitely a company where human replacement by robots would be a step up.
I’m just glad their “highest officials” lol managed to sort the problem and in only 12 hours! I’d also like to extend my gratitude to Hema, Fathi, Sankar and the rest of the eir care team in India for providing updates on their twitter feed.
DNS server outage back-up plan ……
Log into router with your password (wireless key is the default password unless you’ve changed it)
VDSL WAN 1 / GE WAN 1
Edit
Static DNS (Tick Box)
IPv4 Primary DNS Server
8.8.8.8
IPv4 Secondary Server
8.8.4.4
Save
or
Windows Users => Right click Internet icon => click on “Open Network and Sharing centre” => Change adapter settings => right click on ethernet or wifi (Whichever you are using), click on Properties => Double click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and type 8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1 in the preferred and alternate DNS server.
Eir are the absolute pits. I’ve only been with them a month and this is the second time that I’ve been left with no service. Not a word of explanation or apology from them via SMS or any other means. A simple text explaining the pr born and saying ‘Sorry, we’re working on it’ would have been something at least. Incredibly poor service. If you’re thinking of switching to them, don’t.
@Dominic Leleu: HCL Technologies Limited (Hindustan Computers Limited) is an Indian multinational technology company, headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is a subsidiary of HCL Enterprise
DNS has redundancy after redundancy there is no excuse for a DNS outage except planned. What EIR didn’t say was most likely poor design or lack of investment
Maybe it’s as well that Eir are a non runner in the national broadband stakes, if they cannot have basic backup for the system. This service is safety critical for so many people & business, it is simply not adequate to just post apology.
The regulator needs to have sufficient power to fine these companies for non performance, & ensure that all outages are automatically credited to consumers.
That alone will force them to ensure that adequate backup is in place to minimise disruptions.
Their web site is down today and a long wait to talk to customer services. I asked the person I finally spoke to at Eir if the company was facing financial difficulties but he was understandably non-committal. I am switching my mobile to another service provider in case of the worst.
when did all this start, spent 2 days trying to contact their staff, their email down phone lines wait so long no point, have been outsourced so not that bothered, if there is anything they answer, just they hang up, the twitter seems to automated as just go off without a I’m finished work now Can someone please investigate what’s happening Their staff were one of their best aspects, super pros last time I had reason to call just few months ago. Now no one anywhere phone email etc. News on this be very helpful, people need to plan if there’s a problem, has there been redundancies, be really really bad if they got rid of excellent staff and outsourced to random call center. Really bad
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