First Conviction: Bonus - Behind the Scenes
Pirate Predator
RTÉ Documentary on One
4.4 • 778 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a combined project of a podcast series and TV documentary, First Conviction was over 15 months in production. In this bonus episode - and in a first for RTÉ - we give an insight into how the entire production was made through all of those involved.
Hosted by Aoife Hegarty (Deputy Editor, RTÉ Investigates), we hear from Tim Desmond (Producer, RTÉ Documentary On One), Philip Gallagher (Director, RTÉ Investigates), Pamela Fraher (Reporter, RTÉ Investigates), David Doran (Editor, RTÉ Investigates) and Liam O’Brien (Series Producer, RTÉ Documentary On One). We also hear from our host Ruth Negga and composer Mel Mercier.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to First Conviction. I'm Ifa Hegarty, the deputy editor of RTE Investigates, and I'm joined today by the team behind this project. |
| 0:13.7 | I'm Pamela Friar, reporter with the Investigations Unit. I'm Philip Galaher, producer-director with RT Investigates. |
| 0:20.5 | I'm Lima Bryant, series producer with Dockin-1. |
| 0:23.5 | David Dorn, editor of RT Investigates. |
| 0:26.2 | I'm Tim Desmond, a producer with the documentary on One. |
| 0:29.7 | Today we're gathering to discuss the mechanics behind this podcast series and television documentary, |
| 0:36.9 | a project we've all collectively been working on for the past year or more. |
| 0:42.0 | And I suppose, Liam, that takes us back to over a year ago. |
| 0:45.5 | It does. |
| 0:46.2 | It all started when you saw a very small article that brought your attention to this story. |
| 0:52.3 | Yeah, it was a Saturday. |
| 0:53.7 | I can still remember it clear as day. |
| 0:56.1 | Saturday afternoon saw an article in the journal and it was about this story and the particular |
| 1:02.4 | phrase that caught my attention was the defence teams at the time labelling it what they viewed |
| 1:07.9 | as an appalling miscarriage of justice. So I actually just picked up the phone |
| 1:13.0 | that afternoon, rang a couple of the legal teams that were involved. One or two of them picked up. |
| 1:19.4 | And one in particular said, I've been waiting three and a half years to receive this phone call. |
| 1:24.4 | Obviously, we just spoke briefly that afternoon about what the story story and I got some sense of the scale. And then you and I had actually had done an RT Learn. I think it was a couple of years previously with Paul McGuire and David's predecessor. And we had always said, look, if the right story comes, we're two kind of units. We do audio, you do video. |
| 1:48.1 | You know, it felt like a kind of a happy marriage, a good place we could come together. |
| 1:51.3 | So we met here in RT for a cup of coffee one afternoon. |
| 1:54.7 | And I guess here we are, whatever it is, 15 months later. |
| 1:56.5 | Yeah, I remember that cup of coffee. |
... |
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