75% of RTÉ staff earn less than €49,000

ALMOST three quarters of staff in RTÉ earn less than €49,000 a year, according to figures released yesterday.

However, RTE director general Cathal Goan is being paid up to €250,000 a year.

Other high earners on RTE’s board of directors include chief financial officer Conor Hayes, who receives between €200,000 and €250,000. The managing director of radio, Adrian Moynes, and the managing director of news, Ed Mulhall, are both paid between €150,000 - €200,000.

It is the first time the station’s entire salary scale has been published. A spokesman said this was part of its public service commitment to ‘openness and transparency’.

However, RTÉ's list of ‘Top 25 earners’, including broadcasters such as Pat Kenny and Gerry Ryan, will not be published until later this month.

An RTE source said most station staff were eagerly awaiting the publication of the Top 25 earners, because it would provide ‘ammunition’ for them to ask for comparable salaries.

Newsreaders in RTE are paid on an eight-point scale, starting at €56,820 and rising to €66,115. This list is believed to include Sharon Ní Bheoláin, Aengus MacGrianna and Eileen Dunne.

It does not include Six One anchor Brian Dobson and Nine O’Clock newsreader Anne Doyle, who are on more lucrative contracts.

Correspondents are paid between €54,000 and €74,000, although economics correspondent George Lee and special correspondent Charlie Bird are believed to exceed this.

There are some discrepancies which have aroused interest among RTE staff. For example, a radio researcher is paid a starting salary of around €6,000 more than a television researcher, even though the work is almost identical.

The figures cover a variety of positions in RTE, including cleaners (starting salary €14,971), camera operators (€29,040), public relations executives (€38,263), TV producers (€40,441) and editors (€62,879).

RTE employs around 2,000 staff, including 169 managers in television and radio.

Last year, the Minister for Communications, Dermot Ahern, approved a €2 rise in the licence fee, rather than the €3.45 RTE had requested, due to a lack of progress by RTÉ in relation to reducing staff numbers.

However, RTE has said it has implemented 110 voluntary redundancies and increased its production of home-based programming.

It made consecutive losses over four years - including €40 million in 2001 and €21m in 2002. Last year, the losses were turned into a surplus of €500,000.