McGrath takes umbrage at RTE
NOW, it is always very unfortunate when old friends fall out. Independent TD Finian McGrath is "hopping mad" with RTE and has sent letters to Morning Ireland, the RTE Head of Current Affairs and a formal complaint to the RTE Authority about a critical report filed by David Davin-Power.
RTE and McGrath may once have had the warmest of relationships when Finian's stint on Celebrity You're A Star surely helped to secure McGrath's re-election to the Dail.
However, as the mandarins of Montrose gird their loins in preparation for a Dail grilling over the John Crown and Justine Delaney Wilson, affairs, our singing independent TD has launched a surprise attack on the embattled station.
Sadly, as is so often the case with these wars, it was a slight on the 'dignity' of Bertie's favourite independent Dail deputy that started the row.
On the Morning Ireland radio programme after the motion of no confidence on Mary Harney, the saturnine RTE political correspondent David Davin-Power claimed McGrath's highly public state of indecision had not been taken seriously in Leinster House.
Sadly, an incandescent McGrath was less than impressed by the notion that he "had only been throwing shapes" over the Harney debacle.
Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Finian McGrath claimed his indecision had not been a case of following the politics of the Grand Old Duke of York.
In fact, supporting Harney had cost him "30 per cent of my closest supporters" (and to think we reckoned it was the singing!) and that "at a meeting the decision to support the Government had been carried by a narrow margin of six to four".
In the aftermath of the report, an incandescent Mc Grath confronted poor Davin-Power in Leinster House and complained to the producers of the national broadcaster's flagship programme Morning Ireland.
However, since then he further ratcheted up the pressure by sending letters to Morning Ireland, the RTE Head of Current Affairs and a formal complaint to the RTE Authority.
In a letter to the authority, singing Finian claims that RTE distorted the facts of his position and was not objective.
But ultimately the source of his outrage was his belief that Davin-Power engaged in a personal rather than a political attack which "trivialised" the political stance of our hero.
Fifth Column is waiting with some interest to see whether Davin-Power managed to "trivialise" the former singing star.
