Main Points
- Pundit and former politician Ivan Yates appears at the Oireachtas Media Committee this evening.
- Mr Yates’s work as a political commentator during the presidential election campaign after providing media training to Jim Gavin has caused controversy.
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And with that, the meeting is over.
We’re going to wrap up our live story now, thanks for staying with us this evening.
Mr Yates, in turn, thanks Mr Kelly.
He also notes that some people have said the two of them should start a podcast. Watch this space.
Mr Yates said he “didn’t know what to expect” before attending today’s hearing, adding that some previous Oireachtas committee hearings have been confrontational - citing meetings with former Rehab Group CEO Angela Kerins and former RTÉ presenter Ryan Tubridy in this regard.
“This territory is the wild west, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Alan Kelly again thanks Mr Yates for appearing before the committee. He said other people were asked to do the same, but turned the committee down.
“We do acknowledge the fact that you had the gumption to come in here and others didn’t.”
Mr Kelly said Mr Yates’s contributions will provide “food for thought”.
Mr Yates said he is still friends with Noel Kelly, who runs NK Management, the company behind the Path to Power podcast.
“Noel Kelly is a personal friend of mine, and I’m not going to get into what happened on the Saturday [November 1st; when the Jim Gavin media-training news broke], but all I can say is that he remains a personal friend of mine.”
Fianna Fáil Senator Alison Comyn, a former journalist, asks Mr Yates if he ever considered himself a journalist.
He did not, he said.
“I was never a member of the NUJ [the National Union of Journalists], I never went to journalism school. I actually don’t enjoy the company of journalists.
“I teach people on the course not to trust journalists.”
Social Democrats TD Liam Quaide said he disagrees with Mr Yates on many issues, in particular migration and climate change, but that he will be missed from the airwaves.
Mr Quaide asks Mr Yates about comments made by his former podcast co-host Matt Cooper.
In an interview with the Irish Independent earlier this month, Mr Cooper said of Mr Yates: “I think there is a psychological thing going back to his bankruptcy. His whole modus operandi since is that he wants to make as much money as he can to put himself in a good financial position … he doesn’t seem able to turn down anything."
Mr Yates said the situation was “nothing to do with my psychological state”.
He said he was planning to leave the Path to Power podcast in the near future anyway.
“I’m 40 years married in December, I’d decided to take January and February off way before and I was looking to get off the podcast - because I actually found I was becoming part of the story ... and I found that stressful, and I didn’t want to be in that space.”
Mr Yates said he left The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk and The Tonight Show on Virgin Media when both places wanted him to stay.
“They couldn’t believe it. I sometimes get bored easily.”
When asked for his advice about how legislators should approach this, Mr Yates told Mr Kelly: “What you should do is really beyond my pay grade”, before adding “I will respect what you decide to do”.
Committee chair Alan Kelly is now questioning Ivan Yates.
The Labour TD said he understands the point Mr Yates made earlier about the difficult nature of regulating podcasts and how this would be enforced.
“I accept, by the way, in principle, what you’re saying, as regards that this is, I suppose, tricky territory - you can overreach,” Mr Kelly said.
However, he added that “regulatory change” is needed to ensure transparency for listeners.
He said legislators need to find “a happy medium”.
Fianna Fáil TD Pádraig O’Sullivan asks Mr Yates about comments he made on Path to Power about MEP Billy Kelleher, who had expressed a desire to run in the presidential election prior to Jim Gavin being chosen as the party’s candidate.
In these remarks, Mr Yates said Mr Kelleher “won’t be president, he won’t be elected”.
Mr Yates said he made these remarks before he had any involvement in Mr Gavin’s campaign, noting that Fianna Fáil contacted him about doing media training around September 23rd.
The committee is back after a break for a Dáil vote.
Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould said Mr Yates had a “position of privilege” and should have told listeners about his conflict of interest.
Mr Yates said his job is to give his opinion, not to be a journalist. He said his brand is “right-wing ... anti-woke, pro-Trump, whatever it might be”.
Mr Yates said Mr Gould may find some of his views “obnoxious, and I respect that, and that’s where we agree to differ”.
He continues: “But please don’t say that I’m this impartial guy ... I was never impartial, I was opinion-driven.”
Fine Gael TD Micheál Carrigy is now addressing the committee. He thanks Mr Yates for predicting he would be elected in the November 2024 general election.
The Longford–Westmeath TD said he listened to this particular podcast episode “every single night” during the campaign.
Coming back to matters at hand, Mr Carrigy said that Mr Yates’s “smear the bejaysus” remark was “seized upon” by the Connolly campaign during the presidential election, having a detrimental impact on Fine Gael’s campaign.
Mr Yates said part of the reason Path to Power was popular was because he could give good insights due to his close political connections.
“In fact, if I’m guilty of anything, I’m the best back-channeller in the business. I like politicians. I don’t really like journalists,” he said.
Mr Yates said his involvement with a number of companies is public knowledge, citing this article by Colm Keena which details his business dealings.
Company filings show Mr Yates is a director of four companies: ACSJY, Yewtree Infotainment, Golden Farm Thoroughbreds and Mortimer We Re Back.
Mr Yates questioned why there has been such a focus on him in recent weeks.
“How come in all of this controversy over two or three weeks, not one other party has come forward with one [media] coach?
“There’s no coaches, or they’re just all hiding in the undergrowth? Is that credible?”
Social Democrats TD Sinéad Gibney asks Mr Yates how many politicians or parties he has provided media training for. Mr Yates refuses to answer, saying he does not discuss his clients.
She takes issue with his phrase that declaring every conflict of interests would be a “mood killer”.
Ms Gibney said there needs to be more transparency in the media sector in general.
“We are now at a point where broadcasters have a multitude of interests, and journalists, op-ed writers, have multitudes of interests that are simply not available to readers, not available to viewers.
“And we do not have a regulatory framework, as of yet, to enforce anything around that.”
Mr Brennan said Mr Yates was “pouring fuel on the fire” of online discourse with his “smear the bejaysus” remark during the presidential election.
Mr Yates said he regrets “the impact that phrase had on the whole campaign”, accusing the Connolly campaign of “weaponising” his comments.
However, he said he’s not sure if it impacted the overall outcome of the election as Catherine Connolly won by such a landslide.
Who had a mention of Troy Parrott on their committee bingo card?
Fine Gael TD Brian Brennan has compared Mr Yates giving media training to politicians and then discussing them in the media to someone training Troy Parrott and then refereeing a football match he is playing in.
Mr Yates doesn’t see the connection.
Sinn Féin TD Joanne Byrne asks Mr Yates if he regrets saying Fine Gael should “smear the bejaysus” out of Catherine Connolly during the presidential election.
He said he doesn’t necessarily regret the remark itself, but regrets how it was used by the Connolly campaign and the impact it had on Heather Humphreys’s campaign.
Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne asks Mr Yates if the public should have been made aware that he worked with Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy.
Mr Yates hosted the launch for Ms Murphy’s Wexford Independent Alliance grouping in March 2024 and has praised her publicly.
During this back and forth, Mr Yates said he would work with anybody.
“I’m freelance,” he said, quickly adding “but not free”.
Senator Evanne Ní Chuilin, a former sports broadcaster with RTÉ, said that members of the public may not be aware of the nuances of media training in the same way politicians or journalists are.
She asks Mr Yates about his views on the need to regulate podcasts.
Mr Yates questioned how this could be done, noting that Irish podcasts compete with international ones.
He said it’s a good thing that podcasts are often more informal than mainstream media.
He noted that, on Path to Power, he would call the committee’s chairperson, Alan Kenny, AK47 (a widely-used nickname for the Labour TD) because it is “colloquial”.
“That’s a different language, and it’s more gossipy, and people love it, and it’s, just, it’s less PC.”
Mr Yates said that bringing in more regulations for podcasts could be a slippery slope, as some politicians might unfairly target podcasts they don’t like or podcast hosts whose views they disagree with. He said such a scenario would be “outrageous”.
He said it’s also hard to define what a current affairs podcast is.
“Is the The 2 Johnnies podcast a current affairs podcast? It might be, if I was on it.”
Mr Yates said that giving training to Government ministers did not impact the type of commentary he gave on the podcast or in other media interviews. He said he has often been critical of Government policies on housing and other issues.
When asked if he regretted not telling his former podcast co-host Matt Cooper about his role in media training Jim Gavin while commenting on the presidential election, Mr Yates said:
“I reflected on that, and on the particular morning where this blew up, on the Saturday morning, I said to Matt, ‘I deliberately didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to be in any way conflicted’.
“In other words, he could say, ‘Oh, I never knew any of this’, and it was a statement of fact.
“If I had said, confidentially, Matt, ‘This is something I do’, it would have put him in a very invidious position. So I didn’t put NK Productions (who made Path to Power) or him in that situation. And I felt that was fair to them.
“I took it upon myself. I took full responsibility for myself, and I took those decisions, knowingly and in real time.”
Mr Ahearn asks Mr Yates if he sees a conflict of interest in the fact he gave media training to Housing Minister James Browne and people working in the housing and construction industry while he himself discusses housing issues in the media.
Mr Yates doesn’t think there is.
He said he trains people from a range of backgrounds and, regardless of who they are, when they come to him, he has the same approach.
“I’d say, just tell me what your message is, and I’ll tell you to do it in two sentences instead of six, to be memorable, to be impactful, maybe to be witty, but also to connect with people.”
The first question asked of Mr Yates, by Fine Gael Senator Garret Ahearn, is whether or not he received training ahead of his appearance today.
“No, I’m self trained,” Mr Yates said in reply.
Mr Yates said he understands there have been “difficulties with the RTÉ register in the context of the DPC [Data Protection Commissioner] and GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]”.
“To extend this on a statutory basis to all broadcasters and podcasters would have severe consequences. Instead of controlling ‘hate speech’, we could limit ‘free speech’.
“The reality is that people who express strong opinions on topics such as migration, Trump, the woke agenda and the nanny state don’t conform to a mainstream media consensus.
“A sanitised ‘politically correct’ media limits the national conversation. It could widen the gap between ordinary people and the ‘belt way’.
“A national echo chamber is one of the greatest drivers of alternative media.”
“I want to say just a few words on understanding conflicts,” Mr Yates said.
“I believe my predictions and 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.
“There are all sorts of conflicts across every walk of life, relationships, friendships, political, shared experiences, financial. Can we police them all?
“Do we want to drown our legacy media in more and more onerous regulations, rules and protocols or do we want to trust people to manage reasonable situations reasonably, and to trust their audiences to make up their own mind.
“Finally, as regards this committee’s consideration of future legislation, regulation and policy of the media, I note you are deliberating over the Broadcasting Bill 2025 and inter alia, the establishment of a Register of Interests. In all roles, I will of course abide by prevailing regulations.”
Mr Yates continues: “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. I don’t propose this evening to give further answers to my perspectives on these matters other than a lengthy interview I had with David McCullagh on RTE’s Today programme on November 10th.
“I am available to meet with the Commission if they desire it. As always, it is open to any member of the public who believes that I have not acted with fairness and objectivity, to lodge an objection with the Commission.”
Yates tells the committee he is also a founding co-host of the Path to Power podcast alongside Matt Cooper (where he worked from December 2023 to October 2025).
“Podcasts hold a very important space in the media ecosystem, and a major part of their 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.
“In the case of Path to Power, I don’t think that anybody was tuning in to hear two versions of Matt Cooper. The contrast between the styles and approaches of Matt on the one hand and myself on the other that was a major attraction for listeners or viewers.
“I approached issues from a very different perspective - with deep political experience and connections and with relationships across the parties and with a real-world experience of both the economy and politics.
“This was part of the attraction.
“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. Thankfully we did not and I hope that burden is never placed on podcasters.”
Mr Yates noted that his LinkedIn profile refers to his media training and that “most people know that I am a former politician”.
“So, it hardly requires an enormous leap of imagination to think that I might have combined these interests at some point.
“And while I have always kept the identity of my training clients confidential, my work with Fianna Fail politicians has been written about before.
“In 2022, for example, John Drennan of the Irish Daily Mail wrote about it – without any input from me, I might add, and without much interest from anyone afterwards to be honest.
“Media training is something I have been doing for about four years. But, 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.”
Yates said he is no longer a full-time broadcaster, noting he left that role in July 2020.
Mr Yates is now delivering his opening statement.
He thanked the committee’s chairperson, Labour’s Alan Kelly, and said he is “very happy to be here”.
“I understand that you invited a number of people who train politicians for media engagements to come along but that I’m the only one that agreed to come. That’s a pity because we would benefit from hearing various perspectives on these issues,” he said.
“I’m still flabbergasted at the volume of attention which has focused on my media training activities over the past three weeks. Media training has been a small element of my commercial activities over the past number of years.
“And media training for politicians has been even smaller but in the last few weeks, it seems to have assumed an enormous importance. And to be honest, I’m surprised at the level of surprise that my work in this area has generated.”
Aoife MacEvilly, commissioner for broadcasting at Coimisiún na Meán, earlier today told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Media that the onus is on broadcasters and media outlets to ensure there is transparency around such issues.
In a general sense, Ms MacEvilly said the broadcasting code applies to broadcasters rather than individuals, Ian Curran reports.
The onus is on them to have “measures in place to ensure that they can be aware” of their contributors’ interests – “whether personal, financial or otherwise” – that could conflict with the fairness or impartiality of their programming.
“I think the expectation for audiences is that the broadcaster would indicate if there is an interest or the reason that somebody has been brought on to comment on a particular topic, that is relevant to that,” Ms MacEvilly said.
On his podcast work, Mr Yates will say “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”.
The statement 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.”
In his opening statement, due to be delivered around 6.30pm, Mr Yates will say that 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 will add: “To be honest, I’m surprised at the level of surprise that my work in this area has generated.”
Mr Yates will say “while I have always kept the identity of my training clients confidential, my work with Fianna Fáil politicians has been written about before”.
According to his opening statement, he will say that he has done media training work for about four years, before adding: “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.”
Representatives of Coimisiún na Meán (the Media Commission) appeared at the committee separately earlier today.
Ireland’s broadcasting code places the onus on broadcasters and media outlets to ensure there is transparency around the political and business interests of panellists and pundits appearing on their programmes, the media regulator said.
Pundit and former politician Ivan Yates is due to appear at the Oireachtas Media Committee on Wednesday evening.
He 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.
His role as a co-presenter on Path to Power ended earlier this month after it emerged he had trained Mr Gavin.
Mr Yates also provided media training to other Fianna Fáil politicians in recent years, Cormac MacQuinn and Ellen Coyne report.
