Radio: Blowing Hot and Cold

Perhaps it was Sam Smyth's treat to himself to have the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, on Today FM's Sunday Supplement on the day of his birthday. Smyth, McDowell and Mairéad McGuinness had some cosy chats, pretty much agreeing on immigration, identity cards, policing and prison services. They would though, wouldn't they?

Ferriter and McDonald reminded the minister of the unprecedented levels of overcrowding in prisons, the three violent deaths in Mountjoy in recent weeks and the extent of drug use on the inside. When vaguely challenged by Smyth on the criticism outlined by Inspector of Prisons Dermot Kinlen, McDowell robustly made it clear that he did not appoint Kinlen, he did not agree with Kinlen and that Kinlen told him he would turn on him, and he has. As if the content of the Prisons Inspectorate Report was purely personal and not a reflection of the deplorable, inhumane conditions still prevalent across the Irish prison system.

According to the British government, torture, including boiling people to death, is a legitimate way of obtaining intelligence from dissidents. When Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, raised his concerns about this with the British Foreign Office, he was encouraged to resign. When he refused to stand down, they accused him of fraud, selling passports for sex and being drunk. Subsequently, he had a nervous breakdown and retired from the British Foreign Service in 2004. He has been cleared of all allegations since. Murray was the focus of the first in the three-part documentary series Whistleblowers, currently being aired on RTÉ Radio 1 on Thursday nights. If you read these extraordinary stories in a thriller, you wouldn't believe them. Programme two chronicled the story of Dr Gerard McGinnity, who was a dean in Maynooth in the mid-1980s. He told his seniors at the time about students' concerns over the sexual behaviour of the college vice-president, Michael Ledwith. McGinnity was forced to resign by Bishop O'Fiach, while Ledwith was promoted to college president. Ledwith subsequently resigned early and agreed a financial settlement with a seminarian who alleged Ledwith had abused him.

In the third part of the series on 31 August, Jeffrey Wigand will tell the truth about the tobacco industry. Pity this is not a 52-part series telling the story of whistleblowers in the Garda, in the health services, in planning, development and business sectors.