Taoiseach says RTÉ will not be put under pressure to sell Montrose site

The Taoiseach has said the Government will not put RTÉ under pressure to dispose of its Dublin 4 headquarters in return for additional public funding. Speaking in Limerick, where he attended the reopening of the Flying Boat and Maritime Museum in Foynes, Leo Varadkar said “we’re not going to make any demands of that nature”.

“RTÉ has already sold some of the site at Montrose and that’s going to [provide] much needed housing in Dublin and I think also there’s a school site there as well,” he said.

“I think when it comes to selling more of the site or leaving the site entirely, that has to be analysed properly, because if you sell more of the site or all of the site, then RTÉ has to go somewhere else. Where would that be? That site has to be bought, a new building has to be built, and in the interim, you’d have the costs of managing both. So I don’t think it should be done just for demonstration effect. I think it should only be done if it adds up and makes [financial] sense.”

The Taoiseach said RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst had already begun making “tough decisions”, including introducing a recruitment freeze and cutting back some allowances.

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Mr Varadkar urged people to continue paying their TV licences. “Not because it’s the law but because it funds broadcasting in Ireland, and not just RTÉ – it funds private broadcasters as well, content creators, children’s programming, Irish language programming, and important news programming from all the regions in Ireland too, and that’s why I’m paying [it] and that’s what I encourage other people to do.”

The Taoiseach declined to comment on whether Ryan Tubridy should pay back the €150,000 he received as part of a deal with Renault.

Earlier Tánaiste Micheál Martin expressed discomfort at the suggestion Tubridy had a “moral case” to repay €150,000 he received as part of a controversial payments deal involving the Renault motor company.

Mr Bakhurst told an Oireachtas media committee on Wednesday that there was a “moral case” but no legal mechanism for RTÉ to recoup the money.

Asked if he agreed with Mr Bakhurst, Mr Martin said: “I’m not entirely comfortable with how all of that has been dealt with by RTÉ.

“I think the Grant Thornton report laid it out.”

Mr Martin said that for him the more important question was the lack of governance and lack of authority from RTÉ in response to all of the issues that arose during the summer, as well as a lack of coherence.

“It’s not about personalities. It is about how we develop a robust, resilient, fair and balanced public media provision in the country. And that means a national broadcaster, but it also means local radio, all media platforms, print media, digital. All [media] that contribute to public service content should get funding in respect to that public service content.”

Mr Martin specifically rejected a solution put forward by Minister of State for the Office of Public Works (OPW), Patrick O’Donovan, that RTÉ sell its land in Donnybrook.

“That doesn’t create sustainability teams. These are a once-off that creates capital revenue but doesn’t deal with long term sustainability. I’ve been involved with Government a long time. Very often selling land is something you will regret later.

Echoing a view expressed by others at senior levels of Government that long-term funding for RTÉ will be forthcoming once it produces a credible plan, he said: “The alternative will be ... we will end up with other platforms that will be very narrow focused and we would be into a very polarised world where people would follow the algorithms to a certain extent, or where we just get partisan views and won’t give an opportunity for a mix of views. So we need to be careful what we wish for.”

Photography contract

Meanwhile, RTÉ has issued a statement defending the value of €60,000 a year contract to provide photography services to soap Fair City.

In its statement, RTÉ said it was inviting submissions for photographers to provide official stills photography for the drama, in a contract worth €240,000 over four years. The contract requires the delivery of 16 approved publicity photograph stills for 50 weeks a year, involving an average of 20 hours work per week.

Fair City executive producer Brigie de Courcy said: “I cannot overstate the importance of high quality, highly curated photography in promoting Fair City in the busy landscape of press and digital publicity. It is vital to have a skilled photographer to capture, in single frames, moments of drama that will intrigue our regular audience, and bring new viewers to Fair City.”

The statement said the contract awarded under tender represents better value to RTÉ than engaging professional photographers on an ad hoc basis.

‘Tone of vengeance’

At a meeting between editorial staff and their line managers on Thursday, NUJ branch chair Emma O’Kelly said the mood was “much worse” than it was at the outset of the Tubridy pay controversy, with concerns voiced about future staffing and output levels. The meeting followed the announcement by Director General Kevin Bakhurst of a recruitment freeze.

“There were far more questions than answers,” she said, “which was no fault of the managers who simply didn’t have the answers themselves. They said they would look to get them and come back to us.”

She said there were specific concerns expressed around the plight of freelances on contracts, the filling of current vacancies, including the one created by the departure of Arts and Media Correspondent Sinéad Crowley, and recruitment for maternity covers.

She said there was a sense of frustration that a story rooted in governance issues had become one about saving money.

“We started out here talking about the need for reforms because of governance failings and excessive secrecy and we have ended up talking about selling campuses and freezing recruitment,” she said.

Earlier RTÉ Trade Union group secretary Cearbhall Ó Síocháin said there is a “tone of vengeance” in the political sphere about RTÉ, and a recruitment freeze had never been mentioned during discussions between unions and the new director general.

There are long-standing vacancies within the station and a freeze will have a detrimental impact on workers and their ability to do their job, he told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland.

In an email to staff on Wednesday morning, Mr Bakhurst told staff that RTÉ is introducing a recruitment freeze with “immediate effect” and stopping “all discretionary spend” to preserve cash “while we get clarity on our financial position going forward”.

[ Five new things we learned about RTÉ from the Oireachtas committee meeting ]

[ RTÉ at Oireachtas committee: Less high drama, more a grim crisis. Expect ratings to slump ]

However, Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik has denied there any “tone of vengeance” by Labour Party representatives about RTÉ. She told Morning Ireland that she had been struck by how little engagement there had been by RTÉ management with unions before the announcement of the recruitment freeze.

“We are very concerned at the lack of regard for workers’ rights. I’ve met personally, along with my colleagues, with quite a number of RTÉ and well, I’m going to say employees, but RTÉ of course has regarded them as freelancers for a long time, is refusing to regard them as employees. This is an unresolved issue,” She

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Simon Coveney has said that if people don’t pay their television licences then there will be no public service broadcasting.

Not buying a TV licence creates a bigger financial problem which the Government would have to resolve with an intervention, he told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny show.

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said people should abide by the law and pay the charge, adding that a lot of the failure to pay was protest, which she said was “fair enough”. “What people want is for the national broadcaster to earn the respect of the Irish public again and for them to be more forthcoming with that.”

The Cork South West TD said selling Montrose was a “one off solution” that would not “guarantee funding for the national broadcaster into the future”.