RTÉ bosses arrive for meeting with Communications Minister

By Cillian Sherlock and Gráinne Ní Aodha, Press Association

RTÉ bosses have arrived for a meeting with the Communications Minister amid fresh scrutiny of its financial management.

Station director-general Kevin Bakhurst, deputy director-general Adrian Lynch, and board chairman Terence O’Rourke arrived together for the meeting with Minister Patrick O’Donovan and his officials in Dublin on Tuesday evening.

O’Donovan called the meeting after it was revealed that Derek Mooney has been at least the ninth highest-paid presenter since 2020, but had not featured in annual lists as he was classified as a producer.

He also said wanted to “flesh out” why RTÉ paid Claire Byrne and Ray D’Arcy almost €100,000 after they left Radio One but were still in contract.

The meeting comes on the same day the minister secured Government approval to put RTÉ under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

O’Donovan said: “RTE needs to demonstrate the very highest standards of corporate governance.

“To that end, the Bill will strengthen the legislative underpinning for the governance of both RTE and TG4.”

Earlier, Tánaiste Simon Harris criticised an apparent “upstairs-downstairs” situation at the broadcaster.

He said: “I think there’s a lot of hard work and decent people in RTE who will feel let down by this latest set of revelations.”

He added: “I don’t want to push to personalise it to anyone, because I think that serves no purpose, but it’s beginning to look like there’s a little bit of an upstairs-downstairs situation going on in RTE, that certain producers can be over here, and that’s not fair. It’s not fair in any organisation.

“So, there’s a fairness issue here, there’s a transparency issue here, and then there’s just an accuracy issue here – fairness, transparency and accuracy. And we need all three of them to ensure we don’t have Groundhog Day.”

Harris said a lack of transparency was not acceptable to the Irish public as he criticised a “drip-feed” of information.

He added: “None of this ‘will there be another revelation?’, no salacious detail – we just need facts, information and transparency.”

O’Donovan said he expected to get “clarity” from RTÉ in the meeting and to find out who to blame in the wake of the further financial issues.

There is a lot of hurt in the organisation because people thought this is the end of it, and clearly it is not

Ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, he said: “We’ve been down this road before, and here we are again.”

He said RTÉ staff are “very aggrieved” and that he had received anonymous correspondence from staff at the broadcaster.

“There is a lot of hurt in the organisation because people thought this is the end of it, and clearly it is not.”

He said there cannot be a “vacuum” in the company and that they cannot have a “relationship built on revelation”.

O’Donovan criticised the “recategorisation” of Mr Mooney as a producer, adding: “It’s a very fancy word – I don’t know if the public will understand it – I never heard of it until last week.”

He also questioned why RTÉ waited weeks to bring the matter to his department.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said bringing RTÉ under the aegis of the Comptroller and Auditor General would create “a more structured framework for accountability”.

He said the revelations regarding Mooney had created concerns, as he stressed it was “essential” to maintain confidence in the public service broadcaster.

Meanwhile, RTÉ has sought the expertise of consultant Sam Whipple, who worked as a “change co-ordinator” at the BBC, to examine how RTÉ is structured and resourced and to identify areas to “improve workflows” and “delivery” across TV, radio, online and social media.

His review started at the end of April and is expected to last 40 days.

The review was not required to be publicly tendered, and it is therefore understood to cost less than €50,000.

Asked about that process, Harris said there was a lot of hardworking people in the broadcaster, but taxpayers “quite rightly” had some concerns.

Elsewhere, Oireachtas Media Committee member Malcolm Byrne said all personnel in RTÉ in receipt of more than 100,000 euro in salaries or payments should have those details published annually.

RTÉ is due to appear before that committee on Wednesday.