RTÉ releases details of exit packages for departing executives

RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst has issued a new statement on the exit packages of some senior executives. File Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

RTÉ has issued a statement to clarify the exit packages of several senior executives - but it has not revealed the amounts paid out.

Among the details included in the latest statement from the broadcaster is confirmation that Rory Coveney, former director of strategy, was given an exit payment upon leaving last summer. 

Responding to pressure to clarify the status surrounding exit payments for senior staff, RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst this afternoon issued a statement detailing the packages given to four people that left the organisation in the last year.

Two of those four received payouts upon leaving.

Mr Bakhurst said in a statement that he “can clarify matters” regarding those senior employees who have left RTÉ since he took over last July, and said he was doing so with their agreement.

However, he did not reveal the details of any financial settlements which were handed out.

He said that former head of commercial Geraldine O’Leary and former head of legal Paula Mullooly had both left the broadcaster of their own volition, the former into retirement and the latter to pursue another opportunity, and that neither of them had received an exit payment.

Mr Bakhurst said that the role of RTÉ’s former director of strategy Rory Coveney, who left the broadcaster last July in the wake of revelations that Toy Show: The Musical had made a €2.3m loss, had been “suppressed” and thus “an exit payment was offered by RTÉ and accepted by Rory”.

He said that, since the role would not be backfilled, “RTÉ will recoup that payment by July of this year”.

In the case of chief financial officer Richard Collins, who left RTÉ last October, Mr Bakhurst said that Mr Collins’ case had been the subject of independent mediation, and that the agreement which saw him leave is subject to “a binding confidentiality clause that was agreed to by both sides”.

He said that “in the interest of fairness” that clause “cannot be breached”.

Mr Bakhurst said that in addition to his statement, he has now “sought an update” to the legal advice he had previously received which had “restricted” him from providing details of the aforementioned exit packages.

On Wednesday, Mr Bakhurst told the Oireachtas Media Committee the details of former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe’s redundancy package.

At that meeting, Mr Bakhurst initially said, under questioning, that the details of any such payouts are “confidential”, before reversing course and saying that Ms O’Keeffe had been paid €450,000 when she left RTÉ in April 2020.

Ms O’Keeffe’s €450,000 redundancy package was agreed in late 2019 despite the fact her role was not suppressed, and was instead filled by Mr Collins via an external competition.

Her package was one of several which saw €2.6m paid out by RTÉ to departing senior executives during the seven-year tenure of former director general Dee Forbes, who resigned from her role last July in the wake of a scandal breaking involving secret payments being made to presenter Ryan Tubridy.