Ms Deirdre McCarthy:

I am glad to have the opportunity to answer the question because there has been a significant amount of factual inaccuracies, misinformation and a lack of context regarding this story. We have been working with the marketing department for a number of months. It wanted to promote RTÉ news and current affairs, particularly RTÉ news on this occasion. We have been working closely with it so that there would be no perception that this was not authentic and reflective of what goes on. The promo reflects the working daily lives of three prominent journalists in the division. It involved, through marketing, some production and needed to do some filming in the newsroom. A decision was made that we would not take journalists off their day-to-day duties and responsibilities. Instead it was agreed with marketing that a number of extras would be hired. These would be out of focus so one would not even see these people. They are blurred. Some filming has been done. Some issues were raised and an awful lot of the misinformation has come from a leak to the media from an internal editorial meeting that took place last Thursday.