A senior Wexford County Council official has rejected charges that he sought improper editorial guarantees from South East Radio in return for buying advertising with the station.
In a statement to Wexford County Council, the council's head of communications, David Minogue, said he had wanted to "rebuild" a "necessary working relationship" with the station, following a Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) judgment earlier this year.
In January, Sipo criticised the council's chief executive, Tom Enright, for putting "unwarranted" pressure on the station during a 2019 row about coverage.
Mr Minogue said he wanted a guarantee that the station would hold all raw recorded interviews – whether broadcast, or not – for two years “should a dispute between the radio and Wexford County Council arise”.
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He said his demand that personal views or opinions by South East Radio broadcasters were not permitted was nothing more than compliance with the Broadcasting Act 2009, which says presenters should not express their own views.
In addition, he said he had sought a guarantee that the station would no longer continue raising an issue if the county council had availed of a right to reply to the station’s initial coverage of it.
“[This] has previously happened. In other words, he said, she said, he said... the thing goes on forever. In this case maybe it’s she said, he said, but that’s another day’s work,” Mr Minogue told councillors.
“We are always given the right to reply and we take it and once we do reply, that should be the end of it, and that’s what I asked for there. And again, I emphasise the word ‘asked’,” he went on.
He said his motivation for engaging in talks with the station's sales manager, Eamonn Buttle, was an attempt to "put the recent differences behind us and to look to renew the excellent working relationship that has always existed".
An email written by Mr Buttle was “a blatant, possibly mischievous misrepresentation of my email to him” and one that was “completely at variance” with the discussions that had taken place between the two, he claimed.
Mr Minogue said he wanted to re-establish “a basis for a renewed professional working relationship between the council and South East Radio” – one he knows that “both organisations wish to see in place once again”.
