Mr. Robert Watt:

Obviously, the call was a private conversation. I am not in the practice of disclosing the contents of private conversations but I did note that the conversation was reported in the papers, which was a bit of a surprise. The context was that "Prime Time" had written to the Department several weeks before the programme was due to be broadcast to give a broad indication of some of the things it would say. It did not share the full details and did not give us an opportunity, as far as I am aware, to review the programme. We were, however, aware of the issues and were involved in correspondence with them, setting out our position, so we had some sense of the allegations that had been made. We were conscious of two things: first, that the allegations were extremely serious and would cause distress to families if they were made publicly and, second, that we did not believe the allegations were true. I wanted to ensure that the director general of RTÉ in her role understood the gravity of the allegations and that they were as serious as could be. It was suggested that officials of a Department were prying on citizens or engaged in covert operations, secret dossiers and so on. This type of language and these types of allegations are serious. First, I wanted to make sure that the director general understood the seriousness of the allegations, which after the conversation I think she did. Second, based on what I had seen and what had been brought to my attention, and based on the whistleblower's report, which I had understood RTÉ had at that stage - elements of it if not all of it; the whistleblower himself had certainly briefed people on it - I wanted to say to the director general that we did not believe the allegations were correct, and I set out why we did not believe they were, and that I did not think it was appropriate for RTÉ to make such serious allegations. That was the basic sense of the conversation.