Pundit and former politician Ivan Yates will tell TDs and Senators he is “flabbergasted” at the amount of attention on his media training activities and will defend his work, stating he has “always acted in good faith” in various roles.
Mr Yates has been at the centre of controversy for working as a political commentator during the presidential election campaign after providing media training to Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin, an involvement he never disclosed.
Mr Yates also provided media training to other Fianna Fáil politicians in recent years.
Last week the former Fine Gael minister told RTÉ Radio he “broke no rules and I have done nothing wrong in my mind”.
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Mr Yates said he had an “iron and enduring rule of client confidentiality”, which prevented him from disclosing his involvement with Mr Gavin.
He said he was “relying on my personal integrity to be fair minded and impartial” while he presented radio programmes on Newstalk and the Path to Power podcast with Matt Cooper.
Mr Yates’s role as a co-presenter on Path to Power ended after it emerged he had trained Mr Gavin.
Mr Yates is due to appear at the Oireachtas Media Committee on Wednesday evening.
Representatives of Coimisiún na Meán (the Media Commission) are to appear at the committee separately earlier in the day.
The committee wants to discuss “challenges in the implementation of Coimisiún na Meán’s code of fairness, impartiality and objectivity in news and current affairs”.
In his opening statement, Mr Yates says media training has been “a small element of my commercial activities over the past number of years” and training for politicians has been “even smaller”.
He adds: “To be honest, I’m surprised at the level of surprise that my work in this area has generated.”
Mr Yates says “while I have always kept the identity of my training clients confidential, my work with Fianna Fáil politicians has been written about before”.
He says he has done media training work for about four years but adds: “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.”
On his podcast work, Mr Yates says “a major part of their [podcasts] attraction 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.”
He adds: “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.”
Mr Yates’s statement says: “Aside from my podcasting, controversy has arisen about my broadcasting roles and remarks during recent months of the presidential election.
“You will be aware that Coimisiún na Meán is presently conducting a review into these matters with both RTÉ and Newstalk.
“Matters pertaining to the operation and implementation of their code are properly being processed there.
“I do not believe it is the function of this committee to carry out a parallel investigation or prejudice the outcome of this due process.”
He is also expected to say: “In relation to my various roles, I feel I must assert my bona fides.
“I have always acted in good faith in discharging each individual role to the best of my ability.
“My commentary role is based on my genuine independent opinions.”
He says: “I have never felt beholden to anyone because of other work” and “I believe my predictions/punditry during elections were based solely on being as accurate and informative as possible.
“And I don’t believe any training role altered the way I saw the election unfolding or the performance of the various candidates.”
The media committee also invited a number of other political commentators and public relations experts to appear before them on Wednesday.
Public relations guru Terry Prone declined the invitation as did Mandy Johnston – a former government adviser during Fianna Fáil-led administrations in the 2000s; and former Fine Gael minister Lucinda Creighton, who set up a public affairs consultancy firm after leaving politics.
Ms Johnston said she declined the invitation “on the basis that I have had no political clients since completing my role as political adviser in [the] Department of An Taoiseach in 2008”.
Ms Creighton said she runs a European public affairs business and “we do not provide PR or media training services”.
She added: “We do not work with any politicians or political parties so I’m not quite sure why I was on the invitation list in the first place.”
