Curran back as RTÉ head months after quitting

NOEL CURRAN has been appointed RTÉ’s new director general just six months after quitting the broadcaster to go and work in the private sector.

Mr Curran (45), the former managing director of RTÉ Television, beat off two external candidates, one from New Zealand and the other from Canada, to obtain the post, the most important in Irish broadcasting.

RTÉ board chairman Tom Savage said the appointment followed an “exceptionally intensive and exhaustive international recruitment process”. Mr Curran’s candidature was seen as something of a surprise as he left RTÉ in May to pursue other interests.

Mr Curran is not giving any public interviews until he takes up his appointment in February next year when the outgoing director-general Cathal Goan finishes his seven-year stint in the post.

Sources say Mr Curran had not expected the job to come up so soon after he quit RTÉ. “He just felt like he wanted a change. He left in May and the announcement that Cathal Goan was retiring came in July,” one person close to him said. “This opportunity does not come up very often so he went for it.”

Mr Curran joined RTÉ in 1992. He became managing director of television in 2003, and was the longest-serving person in that post by March 2010 when he announced his intention to quit.

Mr Curran will be familiar with the financial situation in RTÉ, having been involved in swingeing salary cuts for staff as part of measures to save €68 million last year.

RTÉ’s finances may come under greater scrutiny in December’s budget particularly if the Government decides that the broadcaster should pay the licence fee of pensioners from its own resources rather than through the Department of Social Protection as it is at present.

RTÉ also has to find €70 million for the switch-over to digital terrestrial television.

Fine Gael has pledged to cap the salaries of all RTÉ management and presenters to a maximum of €200,000 as outlined in its Reinventing Government strategy document published last weekend. It recommends that all salaries in the semi-State sector should be capped at that level.

Fine Gael’s communications spokesman Leo Varadkar said RTÉ needed to be aware that Ireland was in a “national crisis” and that no organisation would be exempt from cuts.

Mr Varadkar said he did not accept that a salary cap would put RTÉ at a commercial disadvantage as it was the dominant force in the market anyway.

He said if top presenters decided to leave because of the salary cap it might lead to a “flowering of new talent”.

Labour communications spokeswoman Liz McManus said she did not accept the need for an arbitrary cap on RTÉ salaries, but the broadcaster needed to be more transparent about the salaries it pays presenters.

“There are many financial issues facing RTÉ. The issue of presenters’ salaries is one that has not been dealt with fully yet. There is no reason why these salaries should not be out in the open. I would hope that under Mr Curran we would have more transparency,” she said.

An RTÉ spokesman said its top-paid presenters were private contractors, not salaried staff, and that such a move would stymie its attempts to retain its biggest stars.

“RTÉ would be aware that top presenters across broadcasters generally are paid, in some instances, well in excess of that amount,” he said.

“Any effective bar on RTÉ pay above that would mean that RTÉ couldn’t even bid for top talent even where advertising revenues more than cover a multiple of the salary on offer.”