RTÉ paid €650,000 in car allowances last year with no proof of licence required

RTÉ paid more than €650,000 to staff in car allowances last year – with no stipulation that recipients would have to hold a driving licence to receive the payment.

The figures are contained in a tranche of documents sent by the broadcaster to the Oireachtas media committee in advance of an appearance by RTÉ executives and board members on Wednesday.

The committee is to hear from RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst as well as several members of the board who have not been in public session before – including deputy chair Ian Kehoe.

RTÉ chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh and senior executives Adrian Lynch, Mike Fives and Paula Mullooly are also to attend, as are board members Daire Hickey, Robert Shortt, Jonathan Ruane, Anne O’Leary, Aideen Howard, Connor Murphy and PJ Matthews.

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It comes as a Coalition minister signalled that the broadcaster should give renewed consideration to selling off its Montrose campus in Dublin 4 as a way of addressing its financial woes. Minister of State Patrick O’Donovan told RTÉ Radio 1 that the sum realised for the land could be north of €300 million which would “pale into insignificance what the Government are going to be asked for at the moment which is probably somewhere between €40 million and €50 million.

“But I think that if Virgin Media can broadcast out of an industrial estate, it begs the question, why [is RTÉ] broadcasting probably out of one of the most lucrative sites in western Europe?”

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The broadcaster confirmed to the media committee that car allowances “form part of some employee remuneration and there is no requirement to have a driving licence”.

In separate documents, RTÉ confirmed that some 61 staff members were being paid a car allowance at the end of last year, at a total cost of €656,651. Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe told reporters on Tuesday that the absence of a driving licence requirement “certainly sounds unusual” and it was an issue he would have to “look into further”.

A total of 17 workers get an allowance of between €12,500 and €13,000, with six getting the top rate of between €24,000 and €25,000. The lowest allowance, paid to 10 individuals, is between €1,000 and €1,500.

The documents detail a range of other allowances – the most common being a long service allowance, paid to 306 workers at a total cost of €394,190. Another 194 staff members receive “extra responsibility” allowances which cost RTÉ €980,905 annually. Another 176 workers are paid for extra hours, at a cost of €191,596 last year.

A role-related payment to 54 producers cost the broadcaster €407,675 last year, with a “personal” allowance paid to 46 recipients costing of €491,362.

Employees are also given payments for matters such as driving heavy vehicles, working at heights or with electrical or mains voltage, and doing technology work. These 99 payments cost €220,212 last year. A call-out allowance was paid to 65 workers last year at a cost of €264,221.

In all, some 1,086 payments were made across 11 categories, totalling a little under €4.1 million.

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RTÉ also told the committee that it would not be publishing a named list of the top 100 earners at the station. Earlier this year, it published a breakdown of those earners without names, but told the committee it has not approached its employees about whether they would consent to having their names released.

“It remains inappropriate to ask staff for permission to release their names alongside their salaries. In this regard, RTÉ doubts that the collection of permissions and/or publication of details could be conducted in accordance with the GDPR,” the broadcaster argued.

It told the committee that if it provided a list of those who had refused permission, it would make the exercise of seeking permission redundant and potentially allow the pinpointing of people’s exact salaries by cross-referencing other information.

Speaking about the broadcaster’s future funding on Tuesday, Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said RTÉ would have to convince the Government that there is a “genuine change of culture” and that “demonstrable proof” of this would be needed if the company is to receive extra funding in the coming weeks.

He confirmed that RTÉ had sought “close to €35 million” in top-up funding from the Government before the payments controversy, which has, in turn, led to estimated shortfall of more than €20 million in licence fee income.

A decision about supporting RTÉ with interim funding would have to be made in the “next four weeks”, he said.

Meanwhile, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has signalled his support for the replacement of the television licence fee with a broadcasting charge that would help to fund a wide array of media organisations, including RTÉ.

He warned against funding RTÉ from general taxation, suggesting that it would damage the station’s independence from Government.

“If media was fully and 100 per cent dependent on allocations from the exchequer every year, one could see dangers there in terms of independence of the media. And democracy rests on that independence being ring-fenced and secured ... Any funding model we develop needs to respect that independence.”

Mr Martin said questions about car allowances at RTÉ “need to get sorted – there needs to be proper transparency around that, there needs to be proper governance”.

He warned that without sustainable public service journalism, there would be an increase in the influence polarised or partisan broadcasting: “Otherwise we end up with Fox News, GB News and a variety of algorithms determining our news feed.”

He promised the Government would lead on the issue and that Minister for Arts and Media would be developing proposals for Cabinet for the long term future of RTÉ, but that “we obviously have to take some interim steps to deal with that”.

He added that there were broader questions about RTÉ than just financial ones. He said that questions about financial governance in RTÉ raises questions about the governance of its “obligations to the public in terms of media balance and public service content”. “I would like to get on a solid footing financially and in a sustainable way,” he said.

Later he added that current affairs programmes “like Drivetimes” should not be sponsored by commercial sponsors. Minister for Finance Michael McGrath was non-committal about meeting a need for a financial bailout of up to €50 million at RTÉ but warned that in any negotiation “you rarely get everything you want”.