The RTE News Thread

TV3 is running extended coverage though I don't know if they continued News at 5:30 or broke into SOCS.

Incidentally the only reason I know they did at all is that RTE decided that right in the middle of Simon Covney's concession speech was a good time to go to commercials.

After the 6.1 News had the commercials on RTÉ One; they went to Leo Varadkar's victory speech as Fine Gael Leader for a short time. They then cut him off to let Sharon Ní Bheolaín interview the Fianna Fáil leader Micháel Martin from the RTÉ Cork studio.

There will be Sports news with Evanne Ní Chulainn after another ad break which is on now.

TV3 continued News at 5:30. I assume RTE weren't expecting the count to run over, as they extended their News Special by five minutes.

To be they quite clearly expected the results earlier, given their news special went on air long before there was any news. I listened to Drivetime on Radio 1 and they had a half an hour of coverage of nothing much happening after 5.

RTÉ One has a RTÉ News Special which began from 11:50am to 3pm today to cover the Dáil election of Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach.

There is a rolling ticker is running at the bottom of the bulletin to say that the News will follow Dáil proceedings.

Leo Varadkar's speech in the Dáil today was presumably not shown live on RTÉ News. I think it was shown on a delay.

The coverage coming in from the plinth of Leinster House is shown live now on RTÉ One.

The RTÉ News Special is now going to be over run on RTÉ One with more analysis coming after a commercial break.

The News special on RTÉ with Sharon Ni Bheolain had finished at 3:30pm today.

It will return to a normal Six-One News on RTÉ One later this evening.

The Irish Independent have reported today Newscaster John Finnerty has retired from RTÉ after a low-key bow out.

Has RTÉ cancelled NewsFeed on RTÉ 2? I don't see any mention of it in the schedules next week?

RTE has a very bad habit of reducing the amount of news output during the summer months. We are so close to July, as it is possible NewsFeed is off on holidays for a while.

Remember, RTE News reduce their One O'Clock News from 30 minutes to 15 minutes during late July and August, please they reduce their flagship Six One News from a hour to 30 minutes during all of August.

A mere two & a half minute bulletin, on holiday???

It's one thing to cut the Six One down, and a bit weird to also cut the One to 15 minutes, but I see no reason to give a 150 second Update, a holiday that started before the Confederations Cup.