The director general of RTE, Mr Bob Collins, has expressed regret that the station carried a radio advertisement referring to convicted rapist Anthony Cawley as "the beast".
Cawley committed suicide in his prison cell on April 14th after hearing the radio advertisement publicising an Ireland on Sunday newspaper article.
According to the governor of Wheatfield prison, Mr John O'Sullivan, the prisoner had expressed his concern at the ad and its possible effect on his family.
In a letter seen by The Irish Times to Mr Sean Alyward, the director general of the Irish prison service, and dated June 9th, Mr Collins said the advertisement as submitted should not have been accepted by RTE and he regretted it had been broadcast.
Mr Collins described the use of the animalistic phrase as "inappropriate and degrading" and said the procedures for reviewing advertisements before their transmission had failed in this instance.
E in May to complain about the advertisement on behalf of the prisons' authority interim board. The chaplain of Arbour Hill prison, Fr Fergal McDonagh, had a separate complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority upheld.
Cawley (33) had been serving the longest sentence for sexual crime ever handed down in Ireland and was due for release in 2005. In 1987 he was sentenced to 20 years, later reduced to 16 years, for the vicious rape of a woman in Dublin city centre. Three years later he was sentenced to a 10-year concurrent term for the attempted murder of a prisoner in Limerick prison.
In 1996 Cawley was sentenced to an additional eight years for the "prison rape" of a cell-mate in Arbour Hill prison, the first such case to be prosecuted in Irish courts.
A member of the Travelling community, Anthony Cawley was taken into the care of the State at the age of two and spent time in Trudder House, Co Wicklow, where he was repeatedly raped and abused by staff.