Sir, - Fr John Dardis is quoted as criticising the RTE documentary series "States of Fear" (The Irish Times, July 2nd). He makes a number of statements of purported fact, none of which he attempted to check in advance with RTE or the makers of "States of Fear". The factual position is as follows.
RTE engaged in a lengthy consultative process with the Christian Brothers during the making of "States of Fear" and made every attempt to encourage the Order to present its point of view as part of the programme. Contrary to Fr Dardis's claim, no time constraints were placed by RTE on either the recorded duration of the proposed interview with the Christian Brothers for "States of Fear", or on the final edited duration. RTE regrets the decision of the Christian Brothers to decline to be interviewed not just by "States of Fear", but also by a number of RTE radio programmes in the days following the broadcast of the documentary.
In October 1998, the Christian Brothers very kindly offered to put the makers of "States of Fear" in touch with some men who had had positive experience of growing up in industrial schools. Despite enthusiastic acceptance of this offer, no names or contacts of this kind were ever provided to the programme makers by the Christian Brothers.
Fr Dardis expressed some criticism of the advance marketing of the series "States of Fear". However, contrary once again to his claim, preview copies of the documentaries were not in fact sent to the press. This was a deliberate departure from the normal practice for a documentary series of this magnitude, where it is usual to provide preview copies to a wide range of journalists. However, given the sensitivity of these programmes, it was felt that the standard publicity procedure was not appropriate in this case, and so preview copies were not sent to the press. RTE instead issued a press release, outlining the contents of the programmes. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Healy, Director of Public Affairs, Radio Telefis Eireann, Dublin 4.