{"id":318215,"date":"2026-02-03T15:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T15:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/318215\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T15:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T15:24:07","slug":"lets-get-to-it-claire-byrne-wheels-out-the-big-guns-for-her-first-day-back-at-newstalk-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/318215\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Let\u2019s get to it!\u2019 Claire Byrne wheels out the big guns for her first day back at Newstalk \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

After months of anticipation, Newstalk<\/a> has launched its new schedule, with the freshly arrived Claire Byrne<\/a> taking centre stage in typically solid fashion. <\/p>\n

Other changes are afoot, with new presenters taking over on both Newstalk Breakfast and The Hard Shoulder, but the presence of Byrne, whose unexpected defection from RT\u00c9<\/a> last year sparked a flurry of changes in Irish radio, has understandably been the main talking point in advance of today\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

As one of the country\u2019s best-known broadcasters, she is not only anchoring the revamped roster on the Bauer Media-owned station, replacing Pat Kenny<\/a> as Newstalk\u2019s biggest name, but also in direct competition with her old Radio 1 time slot, now presented by David McCullagh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She sounds unusually excited as she welcomes listeners to The Claire Byrne Show<\/b> on Tuesday morning \u2013 \u201cLet\u2019s get to it!\u201d \u2013 before wheeling out the big guns for her opening salvo, in the form of an interview with Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Her considered interviewing style sounds much the same as usual \u2013 there are no aural fireworks \u2013 but it\u2019s a wide-ranging encounter. Byrne occasionally sounds frustrated as the Taoiseach plays down alarm about Donald Trump\u2019s United States and talks up housing figures \u2013 she archly notes that building output targets are \u201cwildly off\u201d \u2013 but doesn\u2019t unduly interrupt her guest. <\/p>\n

The only time she appears exercised is on the issue of banning scramblers, remarking how her family had seen such a bike spoiling other people\u2019s trip to the park: \u201cWho\u2019s going to catch them?\u201d she asks forlornly.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, Byrne\u2019s show has a familiar feel. She talks to the abuse survivor<\/a> David Ryan with understated sympathy about his meeting with Pope Leo XIV and has an absorbing conversation with Newstalk\u2019s tech correspondent, Jess Kelly, about the scamming potential of cloned AI voices, enlivened by a digitally generated Doppelg\u00e4nger of Byrne\u2019s voice (which doesn\u2019t sound that much like Byrne, but still).<\/p>\n

Also of note is the host\u2019s lively chat with the actor Colm Meaney<\/a>, which highlights how her style contrasts with that of her predecessor. Byrne hasn\u2019t always sounded totally relaxed with lighter items, sometimes sounding as if she\u2019s trying too hard, and sure enough she sounds most comfortable talking to Meany about neoliberal economics and Trump<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Equally, whereas Kenny was open in his disdain of the US president, Byrne (who, she reminds listeners, is back at Newstalk after a decade and a half) attempts some balance in her assessment, which finds little truck with Meany.<\/p>\n

But Byrne\u2019s interview with a Trump-supporting pastor, Mark Burns, is revealing as well as enjoyably tetchy: regularly talking over the increasingly sceptical host, the American minister comes across as a model of doctrinaire evangelism rather than compassionate Christianity. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the most compelling item on a show that doesn\u2019t stray far from the template that Byrne forged on Radio 1; it\u2019s only day one, but on this evidence the host isn\u2019t about to change the unflappable approach that has worked well for her.<\/p>\n

Before her programme, there\u2019s no grand entrance from Anton Savage<\/a> as he starts as sole presenter of Newstalk Breakfast<\/b>. Instead he gets down to business in brisk manner, laying out the morning\u2019s menu. He also reassures listeners who find his presence \u201cunsettling\u201d that the show\u2019s erstwhile hosts Shane Coleman<\/a> and Ciara Kelly<\/a> \u2013 due to make their debut on The Hard Shoulder later \u2013 are \u201csleeping softly\u201d, a fact he repeats several times, as though slowly realising he\u2019ll be rising in the dead of night for some time to come.<\/p>\n

But if Savage harbours any doubts, he doesn\u2019t show them. He approaches his brief with vim, sounding lively and curious as he moves through items on flooding, the Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> affair and road safety. <\/p>\n

This zippy pace makes sense \u2013 unlike his predecessors, Savage can\u2019t trade interviews with a co-host, nor banter away to eat up airtime \u2013 but it equally means he sometimes struggles to find the balance between the punchy and the perfunctory. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Anton Savage: \u2018I was Tubridy\u2019s stand-in. My father got appointed chairman of RT\u00c9, and that ended\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

His interview with Keith Leonard of the National Emergency Co-ordination Group isn\u2019t the most probing, but he highlights a wider public disaffection with Government promises of relief when he hears one Enniscorthy resident, Maureen Peare, say: \u201cYou can\u2019t trust anyone any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a few missteps, some minor (he mixes up the name of the newsreader Shane Beatty), others more important (his news round-up with Valerie Cox is clearly meant to have an irreverent tone, but it ends up sounding clunky and somewhat forced). <\/p>\n

But overall it\u2019s an encouraging start, with Savage bringing a fresh energy and a faintly rakish charm to his solo turn. As he closes his inaugural show, the presenter thanks his production team for \u201cmaking me marginally less incompetent than I am\u201d, underselling his talents in knowing terms. <\/p>\n

Similarly, if the first morning of Newstalk\u2019s rejig yields few surprises, particularly in Byrne\u2019s case, it\u2019s free of foul-ups while providing some intriguing pointers for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After months of anticipation, Newstalk has launched its new schedule, with the freshly arrived Claire Byrne taking centre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23901,9,10,6989,23898,154144,24554,356,18,13,14,6,19,17,15098,11,12,15,16,5765,5,5287,24320,1181,112487,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-318215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-anton-savage","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-ciara-kelly","12":"tag-claire-byrne","13":"tag-colm-meaney","14":"tag-david-mccullagh","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-featured-news","18":"tag-featurednews","19":"tag-headlines","20":"tag-ie","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","23":"tag-latest-news","24":"tag-latestnews","25":"tag-main-news","26":"tag-mainnews","27":"tag-micheal-martin","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-newstalk-radio","30":"tag-pat-kenny","31":"tag-rte","32":"tag-shane-coleman","33":"tag-top-stories","34":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116007394482118811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318215","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=318215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}