Charlie Bird to take up RTÉ position in Washington

RTÉ's CHIEF news correspondent Charlie Bird has been appointed the station's Washington Correspondent. He will take up the post next January.

"We'll see how I like America and how America likes me," he said. "I've been toying with doing something different for a while and this opportunity has come up. I'm going to be there for the new presidency, reporting what's happening in America for the people of this country."

The young Charlie Bird worked in The Irish Timeslibrary before joining RTÉ in 1974 as a current affairs researcher, moving to the newsroom as a reporter after six years.

Some of his best-known reports include his interviews with Fr Niall O'Brien facing the death penalty in the Philippines on a trumped-up charge in 1985, the Mountjoy Prison rooftop protests in 1990, reports from the refugee camps on the Iraqi-Turkish border in 1991 and, with RTÉ economics editor George Lee, the revelations of the NIB scandal in 1998.

The station's current Washington correspondent, Robert Shortt, will return to the RTÉ newsroom.