![\"Presidential](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4863237_1_org_Presidential_Elections.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\nHe also said that his \u201cbiggest clients\u201d included chairing the National Housing Summit and the annual Construction Industry Federation conference.<\/p>\n
In addition, he told Mr Ahearn that he is a property developer, including 90 homes in Castlemartyr, with another 400 homes in Midleton in the planning permission process.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you not see how people would see a conflict with a property developer training people who work in property on media, training the minister of housing on media and then talking about housing on a podcast?\u201d Mr Ahearn asked.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt is a modern version of the Galway tent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Yates denied any conflict, saying he asks people what their \u201cmessage\u201d is and \u201cI\u2019ll tell you to do it in two sentences instead of six\u201d.<\/p>\n
He later said: \u201cIf I coached you yesterday, I would feel free to criticise you tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
When asked by Fianna F\u00e1il senator Alison Comyn, a former journalist, if he regretted not telling Mr Cooper about his training, Mr Yates said he had \u201creflected\u201d on this.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cOn the particular morning where this blew up, I said to Matt, \u2018I deliberately didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to be in any way conflicted\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, he could say, \u2018Oh, I never knew any of this\u2019, and it was a statement of fact.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had said, confidentially, \u2018Matt, this is something I do\u2019, it would have put him in a very invidious position.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Newstalk confirmed that Mr Yates had been a cover presenter on Newstalk for three days during the presidential campaign on September 23, 24, and 25, filling in for Pat Kenny.<\/p>\n
When asked if he had presented on Newstalk and trained Mr Gavin on the same day, Mr Yates refused to answer, saying it was under review by Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n and he was \u201cnot going to litigate those issues here tonight\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Yates dismissed the idea that podcasts could be regulated, saying many of the podcasts on the Irish charts were produced outside of the country.<\/p>\n
He also said that while he regretted saying on a podcast that Heather Humphreys should \u201csmear the bejaysus\u201d out of Catherine Connolly, he insisted he had no role with Fine Gael during the election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also said it was \u201cabsolutely not\u201d a tactic he advised Mr Gavin to pursue.<\/p>\n
Fine Gael TD Brian Brennan branded the \u201csmear the bejaysus comments\u201d as \u201cabsolutely disgusting\u201d as he noted Mr Yates had the opportunity to \u201cmake an official apology\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Yates told Mr Brennan he was being \u201cexcessively precious\u201d and that politics is a \u201cknockdown, drag-out business\u201d and refused to apologise.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI wouldn’t say something like that on a mainstream broadcast\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Connolly campaign deliberately manipulated this,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Several TDs objected to comments Mr Yates had made about them on podcasts predicting the outcome of the last general election.<\/p>\n
Mr Yates told the committee he is \u201cin the opinion business\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they hear Ivan Yates, they’re not getting an impartial someone who’s moderating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re getting an opinion. The same when you pick up a paper; You’ve news, and then you’ve opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am in the opinion business, and so therefore I don’t think that people expect anything from me other than being anti-woke, pro-Trump, whatever it might be. Things that you would find totally obnoxious.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut please don’t say that I’m this impartial guy. People are upset about my impartiality. I was never impartial.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fianna F\u00e1il TD P\u00e1draig O\u2019Sullivan asked Mr Yates to answer several questions as he \u201cgenuinely [felt] that I might get even a nugget of an answer from you, whereas I probably won’t from my own party\u201d.<\/p>\n
He noted that on an episode of Path to Power that Mr Yates said Billy Kelleher was \u201cnot a winner\u201d on September 6. This was before Fianna F\u00e1il politicians voted on whether to pick Mr Kelleher or Mr Gavin as their candidate.<\/p>\n
Mr Yates insisted that he had \u201cno contact\u201d with the Gavin campaign until September 23, and that he did not know he would be providing training when the comments were made.<\/p>\n
He said media reports from 2022 noted he was providing training to some Fianna F\u00e1il politicians.<\/p>\n
He confirmed the \u201cfirst contact\u201d he received from Fianna F\u00e1il regarding training was from a former producer on the Tonight Show, who became a party \u201cpress officer\u201d. Siobhan Russell, the party\u2019s former head of press, worked on The Tonight Show as a producer from 2017 to 2020. She has been an adviser for transport minister Darragh O\u2019Brien since the formation of the government in January.<\/p>\n
Mr Yates insisted she was not involved in the \u201csubsequent\u201d arrangements and there were no \u201cmates\u2019 rates\u201d provided for his services, adding he was \u201cnot that reasonable\u201d.<\/p>\n
At an earlier sitting of the Oireachtas Media Committee, Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n stated that any onus to declare conflicts of interest is on the broadcaster rather than the contributor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ivan Yates has been accused of engaging in a \u201cmodern version of the Galway tent\u201d as he denied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,1109,5,97147,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-190028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-media","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-person-ivan-yates","23":"tag-presidential-election","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115579788149495658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}