RTÉ director general Noel Curran to stand down in May

After five years in the biggest job in Irish broadcasting, RTÉ director-general Noel Curran has announced he will stand down in May 2016.

Mr Curran, who oversaw a turnaround in RTÉ’s finances during his tenure, said he felt “the time is right to move on and take on new professional challenges”.

The board of RTÉ, chaired by Moya Doherty, will now oversee a public competition to find the 11th director-general of the organisation.

In a note circulated to RTÉ staff, Mr Curran thanked his colleagues and said the general election coverage would be a fitting “end-point for someone who once considered himself addicted to live broadcasting”.

He said: “I don’t intend to go over the detail of what the organisation has achieved. Others can judge that, positively or negatively, for themselves.”

Mr Curran’s term had been due to run until 2018, having been extended last year.

The former head of RTÉ’s television division was first asked to become director-general in October 2010. At that point, it was known that the broadcaster was in trouble due to a collapse in the advertising market, but the full extent of its difficulties would not have been clear.

A forecasted deficit of €6 million for the following year had already spiralled by the time he began in the role in February 2011.

Following sharp cuts in operating costs, Mr Curran succeeded in turning RTÉ’s finances around, even as the broadcasting advertising market continued to tumble. Four consecutive deficits were followed by modest surpluses in 2013 and 2014.

RTÉ’s recently published accounts for last year show that it is hiring again, while a suspension of salary increments for senior staff has been partially lifted. But the broadcaster is “not out of the woods yet ”, he said in September.

“As with any job you do, you look back at things you’re very proud of and things you would have done differently,” he wrote to RTÉ employees today.

“I can safely say though that, of all jobs I’ve held, inside or outside RTÉ, this is the one I’ve put most energy into and have got the most reward from - even though it didn’t feel like that at various times over the last five years.

“I think there have been easier times to have worked in RTÉ, but perhaps few as important, given the financial and editorial challenges we faced.”

Minister for Communications Alex White paid tribute to Mr Curran, saying he had provided "strong leadership and direction to RTÉ" and was "a man of outstanding character".

From Monaghan, Mr Curran is married to the singer Eimear Quinn and they have two daughters.

He attended Dublin City University, graduating with a degree in Communication Studies, and worked as a business journalist before joining RTÉ's business and economics programme Marketplace in 1992.

During his career at RTÉ, which was twice broken by spells in the private sector, he was responsible for the launch of the Prime Time Investigates series. He later axed the strand in his capacity as director-general, after it was tainted by the Mission to Prey affair.

Mr White, himself a former radio producer at RTÉ, said Mr Curran was “a highly accomplished television producer, who has been a huge asset to the organisation”.