Conor Kane appointed RTÉ southeast correspondent

Conor Kane has been appointed RTÉ southeast correspondent, which will see him covering Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, South Tipperary, Kilkenny and Carlow for the broadcaster.

A freelance journalist in the southeast region, Kane has reported for the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, the Nationalist and the Roscommon Herald among others. He will replace Damien Tiernan who stepped down as RTÉ’s southeast correspondent in January.

Tiernan said his decision to resign from RTÉ was driven by the broadcaster’s downgrading of regional coverage over the years. He spent 23 years as a Waterford-based RTÉ correspondent and was earning €90,000 a year when he left.

He now hosts the news and current affairs show Déise Today on Waterford station WLR FM.

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After his resignation, Tiernan said he was “effectively working one day a week”. He said the Waterford studio was producing 220 news packages a year in the early 2000s but this fell to between 50 and 60 a year more recently.

He said regional correspondents were used for “the big stories” and “the quirky stories, the three-legged duck, that type of this.” What is missed are the stories in the middle, he said, “the good regional rows, controversies and issues”.

Tiernan said his frustrations at the lack of regional coverage were “certainly” shared by other correspondents. A spokeswoman for RTÉ said at the time that the station was committed to regional coverage on all its programmes and platforms.