Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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RTE Saints, Scholars and Scandals is the new book by former Minister Shane Ross. Good to see you, Shane. Thank you for joining us.
Good afternoon, Matt. Thank you very much indeed.
Listen, before we talk about the book, two things I need to say first.
Chapter 2: What is the new book by Shane Ross about?
First of all, how are you? Because I think we need to explain to listeners that it's not the voice of Shane Ross that we would have known on this programme for nearly 30 years at this stage.
Yeah. I'm fine. Thank you very much for asking. I got a dose of cancer in 2024 in the throat, and it's taken a while to recover, but I'm fully recovered. My health is very good, actually. But, you know, the treatment... It has side effects, and chemo takes no prisoners as such. And it did a bit of damage to my vocal cords. That's why the voice is like that. But they're recovering.
I mean, they were down to about zero a little while ago. And they're recovering almost by the day. So I'm fine, actually. Thank you very much. You know, I'm doing everything else except talking very well.
Well, I'm sure there's nobody who would wish you well, Will, but I can imagine one or two people who might have liked the idea of a speechless Shane Ross, perhaps.
Including those of my family, I think as well. But they're not going to get that for the moment, I'm afraid.
And this is for, but how scary an experience was it for you?
It's pretty rough when you get it on day one. It's the breaking of it, which is so strange because you go in, you think you're going to get the diagnosis you do to get, you think you've got cancer anyway, but you can't hope you don't. And when you're told it, you're kind of shot because your life immediately changes that minute.
And you have to say for the doctors and the medical system, and everybody gets a terrible knocking from everybody, including me. Once they got you there, they just move. It's quite an extraordinary experience. you're out of action immediately almost into doing tests, chemo and radiotherapy and all that. Your life is just gone and devoted to that for maybe three or four months.
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Chapter 3: How did Shane Ross cope with his health challenges?
So that's a tough bit. But it's a great thing to kind of get better. You do feel very grateful because you are facing some pretty unnerving moments during those few weeks. And so it's great when you feel you're recovering and you know you're recovering.
When you got hit with the diagnosis, were you already working on this book?
Yes. Oh, yes, I was. That's why it's three years after 2023, which is when it happened. Yeah, I was well into it. I was actually, it was due to come out, I was three quarters of the way through. And I had to abandon that at that stage. And we had to kind of reposition it as a result because the publishers, Atlantic, were very good about it. They just said, fine.
You go and do what you have to do, and no problem about that whatsoever. We'll resume when you're ready. I had kind of one of my thoughts immediately was, oh, blast, the book's gone, you know. And that's going to mean the contract isn't fulfilled or broken by me. But they were absolutely delightful about it. They just said... We're ready to go ahead.
We might adjust the book a bit when you're ready to go ahead again. And it was difficult because I started writing about four months after I got the diagnosis again. And you have these kind of periods then when you can't do anything much. So you kind of hold it off again and then you start again, you start again. So we adjusted the book a bit. to increase the amount of historical context.
In other words, it's not a book just about Ryan Turbury and the scandals there or the related scandals. It goes right back to 1961 to put them in context. And in that way, it was actually very useful because you can see the origins of the problems of today in 1961.
Did your brush with mortality make you in any way more sympathetic to some of the individuals in the book? And the reason I ask that is because I intended to start by asking you about whatever happened to Dee Forbes, the Director General of RTE, because she failed to give testimony to the Oireachtas committees citing health reasons. And a lot of people were wondering, well, what are they?
But privacy dictated that her health reasons could remain confidential. Did you ever get to the bottom of what actually happened to Dee Forbes and were you more sympathetic to her because of your own experiences?
I think the answer to that is not because of my experiences. No, I wasn't. But my initial reaction was, this cannot be a kind of total villain of the piece that she was made out to be in the Euractus hearings and by her own actions as well. She didn't help herself. And I went out kind of with, is there a way of defending? I'm kind of a bit perverse about things like this.
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Chapter 4: What historical context does Shane Ross provide in his book?
Yeah, but Kevin Backhurst gets that.
Yes.
But do you think, do the other people working at RTE get it?
I think they'll resist it. Absolutely, totally resist it. Why not? There's a voluntary redundancy program in existence and that's, you know, 400 people going to be out of work as a result of that. No, they will certainly resist it. But I think you'll find that... No government here will allow a national broadcaster to collapse.
And that was always the great but unacceptable weapon which Kevin Backhurst wielded during those negotiations. He basically was saying to them, OK, Let us collapse. What are you going to do about that? And no government's going to do that. So there's always going to be, in the future, some sort of RTE.
You and, you know, Newstalk and Today FM may kill it dead in effect, but there'll still be in existence a national broadcaster of sorts.
Shane Ross, great to see you. And you have you in such fine fettle. The book is RTE, Saints, Scholars and Scandals.
The last word with Life Pharmacy. Over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help. Life Pharmacy. Live better together.
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