Second RTÉ worker treated as casual worker despite being a full-time employee for nearly a decade

Continuity announcer Marian Farrell worked as a full-time employee from 1989 to 1998 but was treated as a self-employed contractor, which had a significant impact on her employment entitlements. Picture: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

A second historical RTÉ worker has discovered that she was a full employee of the broadcaster for nearly a decade, despite being treated as a self-employed contractor for the duration of her time there.

Marian Farrell worked full-time for RTÉ as a continuity television announcer between 1989 and 1998.

A single parent at the time, she left RTÉ at the end of her contract after being offered only casual work from that point.

Throughout her time with RTÉ, Ms Farrell received no pension contributions from the broadcaster, despite paying A-class PRSI — the same class generally paid by full time employees.

In or around 2001, Ms Farrell took a case to the Labour Relations Commission claiming that she was owed historic employee entitlements from RTÉ. The case was settled privately.

Ms Farrell, 67, subsequently trained and worked as a therapist, a profession from which she has now retired.

She recently requested an insurability of employment review from the Department of Social Protection’s employment status unit.

On foot of that request, she was informed that since she had been making PRSI-A contributions for the duration of her time with RTÉ, she had been treated as a full-time employee, and hence no determination in her case would be necessary.

RTÉ declined to comment when asked for a response, with a spokesperson stating that the organisation cannot comment on individual cases.

Ms Farrell, who also declined to comment, is the second former contract employee of RTÉ to discover in recent weeks that they had been misclassified as self-employed while working with the broadcaster.

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The Irish Examiner last week reported on the case of Angie Mezzetti a former newsreader with the station, who was classified as self-employed throughout her 18-year career with RTÉ, which ended in 2022.

Ms Mezzetti likewise had taken a case to the LRC, in 2001, arguing that she had effectively been unfairly dismissed when RTÉ stopped giving her work the previous year.

In that action, RTÉ claimed it could not have unfairly dismissed Ms Mezzetti as she had only ever been a casual employee. That case was also settled privately by the broadcaster.

Ms Mezzetti said of her case that she had “always felt aggrieved that I wasn’t recognised as an employee and wasn’t allowed access to the pension scheme”.

It’s believed that a number of other historical contract employees at RTÉ have either lodged or are in the process of lodging their own insurability of employment queries with the Department of Social Protection.

RTÉ is currently the subject of a multi-year review by the Department as to whether or not 695 of its employees had been wrongfully classified as self-employed — or bogus self-employed — between 2019 and 2021 despite doing the same work as people directly employed.

Bogus self-employment is where a worker acting in the capacity of an employee of a company or agency is classified as self-employed for PRSI purposes and as such does not receive the same statutory social insurance contributions and holiday benefits that PAYE workers receive.

RTÉ is set to challenge a number of the Department’s 159 rulings delivered to date in the High Court. Last year, director general Kevin Bakhurst told the Public Accounts Committee that RTÉ’s liability with regard to bogus self employment redress is expected to total no more than €20m.