RTE may refuse to reveal wages, despite FOI Act

RTE says it will go to the High Court if necessary, to prevent information on what it pays for certain programmes being released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI).

RTE says it cannot release the information because contracts it signed when buying the programmes bind the organisation to secrecy. "Contracts can be nullified if either side reveals what's been paid," the station's freedom of information officer, Mr Peter Feeney, said yesterday. "We'd probably only feel comfortable breaking a secrecy clause if we were ordered to do so by the High Court," he added.

Mr Feeney also believes that if the amount it pays for events such as motor racing is revealed, TV3 and other competitors will have an unfair advantage in negotiations to secure programme rights.

The station's FOI office, which is staffed by Mr Feeney and one other E employee, will start processing applications for information today, the first working day in which the station has had to operate under the Act.

Mr Feeney said yesterday he had received 13 applications under the Act so far. Three of the requests were from journalists seeking documents which would reveal the pay of presenters, such as Gay Byrne, Pat Kenny and Gerry Ryan.

E FOI officer Mr Feeney said he was keeping an open mind on the release of the pay of the station's top earners but added he was tending towards refusing the information.

"We have deliberately not decided on this yet. We wanted to get a feel for the level and kind of requests we were going to get," he said.

"If Pat Kenny goes on radio and berates politicians for how much they earn, I can see a public interest in it being revealed how much he earns himself. My job is to be a bit independent of RTE in this. I don't want to start off tomorrow by saying `No, No, No'. "

However, he added that it was likely such applications would be refused. "Certainly it's our instinct that the salaries of some of our main presenters are commercially sensitive. We've always argued against releasing that information. We are certainly very aware that TV3 and UTV are not under this Act and never will be."

Documents written since the Act came into force in 1998 can be applied for, even though RTE did not come under the Act until this month.

However, some records are exempted. These include documents containing commercially sensitive information, personal information and any documents concerned with "the internal review and analysis of programmes".

Information given in confidence is exempted from the Act, as is information obtained in "the gathering and recording in any form of news, information, data, opinions, on or off the record quotes or views from any person or body or source, for journalistic or programme content purposes".

Mr Feeney says the scope for obtaining documents that come under the Act's provisions may be limited by haphazard record-keeping by some RTE departments.

"We have very good records in areas like personnel and finance but in other areas, it's not so good. For instance, reporters, producers and researchers move from one programme to another and don't always file their documentation.

"A lot of the time we're going to have considerable difficulty finding records. Sometimes we're not going to be sure they even exist. We're not obliged to keep every single record. The Act only obliges us to keep records we'd be keeping anyway. For instance, we don't keep every single press release that comes into the newsroom."

Mr Feeney says some records that will be released will reflect badly on RTE.

"We know there are some records that are going to embarrass us. We just have to live with that." email: rosullivan@irish-times.ie