Joe Duffy has praised the callers of RTE’s famous phone-in show as he prepares to present his last episode on Friday afternoon.
The Ballyfermot broadcaster, 69, is retiring after 37 years at the station, where he has presented Liveline for 27 years.
The show has reflected Irish life over the decades, providing a forum for everyday gripes, reuniting long-lost relatives and exposing injustices.
Duffy, the plain-spoken umpire for the on-air debates, has been personally motivated by some of the topics he covered, including the children who died in the 1916 Rising and the survivors of institutional abuse.
He has written books including Children Of The Rising and Children Of The Troubles.
“It will go on. Liveline is on today, but it’s on on Monday as well,” Duffy told RTE Radio ahead of his last programme at 1.45pm.
He added: “It’s the voices on Liveline; the less I talk the better, I find.
“We (the media) are still trusted. In the main we are still trusted, unlike other countries.
“They’re all part of our daily discourse, which is great and I hope that continues.”
Duffy joined RTE as a radio producer in 1989 and came to prominence as a reporter on the Gay Byrne Show.
He presented programmes such as Soundbyte before taking over Liveline from Marian Finucane in 1998, attracting some 400,000 listeners to the phone-in programme.
After Ryan Tubridy’s departure from RTE in 2023, following governance and financial controversies at the station, Duffy became RTE’s top earner on 351,000 euro.
He said his working-class Dublin accent on the national broadcaster had prompted some “green-ink letters” of complaint when he started, some of which were internal.
Among Liveline’s most famous episodes were callers giving their thoughts on the television series Normal People, people sharing stories of corporal punishment in Ireland over the decades, women phoning in about menopause and a row Duffy had with Brian Warfield, from the Wolfe Tones, about the song Celtic Symphony.
Duffy said the only time he has been physically threatened during his tenure was over discussions about the closure of “headshops”, which sold drugs paraphernalia, where he said a man confronted him in a car park.
Asked about whether he would run for the presidency in the autumn, Duffy said: “I will not lose the run of myself.”
“I can see the Aras from Claddagh Green, I’d say that’s the closest I’ll ever get to it.”
