As it happened
- Representatives from RTÉ, including director general Kevin Bakhurst, spoke at a Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications and Sport
- In his opening speech, Bakhurst said it is ‘regrettable’ a sincere attempt to be more open has been categorised as a scandal
- Former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes instructed that Derek Mooney be considered a producer for purposes of presenting his wages
- Oliver Callan, host of the mid morning slot on RTÉ Radio one, is in receipt of a second payment for the production of his Callans’ Kicks satirical show
For a recap of the day’s developments, read the latest piece from Political Correspondent Jack Horgan-Jones.
What happened at the committee?
Bakhurst says some in RTÉ could be earning more than him
Kevin Bakhurst has said that some people in RTÉ could be earning more than him when all payments are included.
He told the chair of the Oireachtas media committee, Labour TD Alan Kelly, who was asking Bakhurst about presenting the totality of payments to people working in RTÉ when payments such as those made for producing shows separately to a core fee are included.
Kelly also raised the case of Sean Rocks, the former RTÉ presenter who died last year.
Kelly’s Labour Party colleague Marie Sherlock has said the treatment of Rocks’s pay has left his family financially worse off after his death, and Kelly told Bakhurst that they will be forced to leave their home in July.
Kelly described the situation in RTÉ as a “mess” telling Bakhurst it was “time to deal with it”. He said the Sean Rocks situation was “horrendous”, adding that the former presenter “paid for his loyalty, he paid for th e love of his work”.
Bakhurst said he had met with Rocks’s partner but suggested that he had to have set rules regarding the treatment of pensions for those who die while working for RTÉ.
Bakhurst also faced scrutiny over the level of payments to Derek Mooney and also RTÉ’s environment correspondent, George Lee.
The committee was told that Mooney was given a “personal contract” in 2007 at which point he diverged from regular salary scales.
The committee was told that Lee has been receiving standard increment payments made to all staff in recent years, although Fianna Fáil senator Alison Comyn said she wanted to know the “path” which had led to Lee’s salary being what it is.
Fine Gael Senator Evanne Ni Chuilieann raised her personal experience as a worker in RTÉ, saying she asked “repeatedly” to be reclassified and that the RTÉ system was a “two tier” approach. “It’s the wrong model and it’s not fair.”
Bakhurst was asked by Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne about the number of people earning more than €100,000 per year, figures reported by The Irish Times this morning.
He said that many of these peoples’ salary would be less than €100,000 as earnings included pensions, while others had moved over the six figure threshold due to pay agreements in place.
The committee also heard details around the size of the RTÉ contingent that went to cover Ireland’s world cup semi final playoff against Czechia in Prague – with 41 people going.
Bakhurst justified this on the basis that there was a strong public interest argument in covering a national event of this scale.
He said 21 radio staff went at a cost of around €25,000, but that due to commercial revenue associated with the trip, this element turned a profit.
The costings for the non-radio side of the delegation weren’t available yet, he said.
There was also an update on the legacy of the Ryan Tubridy scandal, including ongoing efforts by the former presenter and his agent Noel Kelly to secure documents from RTÉ.
Bakhurst said thousands of documents had been handed over but that the pair had appealed the matter to the Data Protection Commissioner.
He said RTÉ was refusing to hand over legally privileged documents, adding that the organisation had paid over €100,000 for legal advice arising from Tubridy and Kelly’s challenge.
Bakhurst rejected comparisons between Derek Mooney’s situation and that which related to Ryan Tubridy, saying the former was a categorisation issue and the latter involved secret payments.
Oliver Callan in receipt of second payment for production of satirical show
Kevin Bakhurst has told the Oireachtas media committee that Oliver Callan, host of the midmorning slot on RTÉ Radio 1, is in receipt of a second payment for the production of his Callan’s Kicks satirical show.
He told Fine Gael’s Micheál Carrigy there are some presenters who work for “independents” – independent production companies – and they are paid separately from their direct work.
“He earns as a presenter and he has a payment for Callan’s Kicks.” When it was put to him that if these two payments were taken on a combined basis, this would put Callan into the top 10 earners from the organisation, Bakhurst agreed: “He might be – he would be.”
Dee Forbes instructed Derek Mooney be considered a producer
Former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes instructed that Derek Mooney be considered a producer for purposes of presenting his wages, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
RTÉ’s current director general, along with top Montrose executives, is appearing before the Oireachtas media committee today, Jack Horgan-Jones writes.
Asked about Mooney’s pay, Bakhurst said that in 2020 Forbes as director general and the then chief financial officer “looked at his contract” and decided the balance of his work was as a radio producer. “We took a different view,” Bakhurst said.
RTÉ deputy director general Adrian Lynch told Sinn Féin TD Joanna Byrne that he looked into the relevant files in RTÉ, which said there was an instruction given to a person in RTÉ payments. “Per DG [director general] he was to be classified as a presenter.”
Forbes, who was a central player in the RTÉ payments scandal of recent years, never appeared before an Oireachtas committee on the matter.
Earlier, Fine Gael TD Brian Brennan asked Bakhurst if he felt RTÉ was fit for purpose, and criticising what he characterised as a “drip drip” of scandal, also asked him if he felt he was the right person to lead the broadcaster.
Bakhurst responded that he had driven extra transparency measures in the organisation. He also said he was sure that an issue similar to that relating to Mooney’s pay did not exist in relation to other high earners in RTÉ, saying he had taken Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan through the top 30 earners yesterday and showed nothing similar was in place.
Bakhurst said Mooney did not benefit financially from the manner in which his pay was presented.
‘Regrettable’ attempt to be more open categorised as scandal - Bakhurst
RTÉ’s director general Kevin Bakhurst is due to tell an Oireachtas committee it is “regrettable” that a “sincere attempt to be more open” has come to be categorised as a scandal.
In the statement circulated to members of the Oireachtas media committee, Bakhurst says the multiannual commitment to €725 million of secure funding across three years is “not, as has been termed, a ‘bailout’”.
“Comprising of both licence fee, and exchequer funding, this funding is a critical financial support to a national public service,” he says.
“To describe this as a ‘bailout’ is at best misleading. At worst it suggests that the organisation is only worthy of support as a mitigation against financial crisis.”
RTÉ executives are due to address the committee shortly.
Oireachtas committee another chance for RTÉ to be fully transparent, says Tánaiste
This afternoon’s meeting of the Oireachtas Media Committee and representatives from RTÉ is another chance for the national broadcaster to be fully transparent and address controversy about pay at the station, Tánaiste Simon Harris has said.
The Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications and Sport is due to meet representatives from RTÉ at 12.30pm to discuss funding and pensions at the station.
Speaking at the turning of the sod at a housing development in Killinarden in Dublin, Harris said RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst “is doing a good job in difficult circumstances”, Tim O’Brien reports.
But he said “I don’t want us to find ourselves in this kind of – I used the phrase yesterday – Groundhog Day.”
Harris said most people believed RTÉ had been fully transparent about pay rates for presenters after previous controversies “but I don’t want to find ourselves back in this situation again”.
“I hope today’s committee meeting genuinely helps to do that,” he said.
“RTÉ is certainly not paying a price for being transparent. It’s important to be transparent and I do think there’s a logic in everybody’s interest in publishing as much information as possible.
“Now I am concerned, I have to be honest, I am still concerned, with the fact that it appears based on information we’ve all read and heard that some producers/presenters were treated differently to others, and I think there’s a fairness issue there.
“I think there’s just a fairness issue in relation to making sure that there’s a consistency in terms of how everybody is treated. Everybody wants journalism to be a good and viable career. We need it to be actually in an era of disinformation and misinformation. It is more important than ever that we have a strong and robust media. So, I, as a Government Minister, don’t wish to be provided running commentary on RTÉ.
“I want RTÉ to be there doing its job, and the people of Ireland value it too. So, today is a chance to put as much information out to the public domain as possible, and I think I’d ask everybody in RTÉ, from the department, the Oireachtas to kind of dig deep here to try and just find a way that we can move this forward quickly without this drip feed of kind of salacious information.”
Full list of candidates in both constituencies
Dublin Central
- Janice Boylan – Sinn Féin
- Tony Corrigan – Independent
- Daniel Ennis – Social Democrats
- Mannix Flynn – Independent
- Colm Flood – Independent
- Janet Horner – Green Party
- Gerry Hutch – Independent
- Ray McAdam – Fine Gael
- Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin – People Before Profit-Solidarity
- Ruth O’Dea – Labour Party
- John O’Leary – Independent
- Ian Noel Smyth – Aontú
- Malachy Steenson – Independent
- John Stephens – Fianna Fáil
Galway West
- Néill Bairéad – Independent
- AJ Cahill – The Irish People
- Mike Cubbard – Independent
- Patrick Feeney – Independent
- Sheila Garrity – Independent
- Cillian Keane – Fianna Fáil
- Seán Kyne – Fine Gael
- Mark Lohan – Sinn Féin
- Niall Murphy – Green Party
- Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich – Social Democrats
- Orla Nugent – Aontú
- Helen Ogbu – Labour Party
- John O’Leary – Independent
- Denman Rooke – People Before Profit-Solidarity
- Michael Ryan – Independent
- Noel Thomas – Independent Ireland
- Thomas Welby – Independent
Elsewhere, the number of RTÉ workers earning more than €100,000 annually grew by more than a third in the last five years.
Figures released by the broadcaster following queries from The Irish Times show that for total earnings – including pensions, salaries and allowances – there were 270 employees earning more than six figures at the organisation in 2020.
Montrose executives will appear before the Oireachtas media committee on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Cabinet approved draft laws bringing RTÉ under the supervision of the State’s spending watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General, alongside several other measures the Coalition said would improve transparency and oversight.
Read the full piece from Jack Horgan-Jones here.
Good morning. Just two more days of campaigning to go before the votes are cast in the Galway West and Dublin Central byelections. Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris is heading to Galway this evening and will be there tomorrow as well.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald will be in both Dublin Central and Galway West. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns will be in Galway today, while Labour leader Ivana Bacik is going down tomorrow. There will be the inevitable swim photo op on Friday morning.
Meanwhile, political correspondent Harry McGee went out in the rain in Dublin with Gerry Hutch and saw the veteran criminal promised votes to beat the band. He couldn’t ... could he? Read more here.
