Presenters’ high salaries ‘RTÉ’s fault’

High salaries paid to RTÉ presenters were the station’s fault and it was up to the station to ‘fix it’, RTÉ director general, Noel Curran admitted yesterday.

Mr Curran said they were on target to achieve 30% in cuts to major presenters, and in some instances that figure will be closer to 40%.

“We were paying some of our presenters too much, that was our fault and ours to fix. We have delivered on what we said we would and we have cut, I believe, more than any other profession I can see…

“We are not finished in this current round [of cuts]. Not everybody has been included. There are other contracts up for renewal and obviously there will be negotiations around those. I don’t want to have those negotiations through the media.”

Asked about payments to Marian Finucane for two radio shows each week, Mr Curran said what Ms Finucane had achieved in attracting weekend audiences was “extraordinary”.

“When you get into this issue of fees and salaries, you end up in a confrontational situation with our presenters to some degree, which is inevitable. We are incredibly lucky with the range of on-air talent, we have both inside and outside the top 10 and they are valued.

“I think Marian Finucane has taken an absolutely huge reduction in her fees and she has taken that and she is continuing to deliver audiences which by European standards at the weekend are quite phenomenal.”

Mr Curran said RTÉ is not pulling back to its commitment to investigative journalism.

“I hope we have learned and I think we have learned. We will make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes in journalism, but I think, hopefully we have learned from the mistakes and I believe we have and we are absolutely committed to that area.”

Commenting on the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland policy that broadcasters need to know where a conflict of interest may lie, Mr Curran said RTÉ had a clear policy in this area.

“We need to say ‘how do we implement that’. There is a question-and-answer session with the BAI where we can try and tease out exactly how they see that working. From our point of view, in principle, we want to be aware where there are potential conflicts of interest. We have put that responsibility on the presenter and on the teams.

“I think the other area we need clarification on is what exactly constitutes a conflict of interest. Is it something involving you; is it a family member; is it your partner?”

On the BAI move to curb personal comment by presenters, Mr Curran said he could understand why commercial stations feel a restriction like this on presenters expressing personal views is a severe restriction on them. “It doesn’t affect RTÉ because we don’t allow it anyway. It is in our guidelines, it is in people’s contracts in terms of bringing RTÉ into dispute.”