Full restitution for bogus self-employed workers would 'bankrupt RTÉ', says Bakhurst

RTE director-general Kevin Bakhurst said: 'The honest thing is if RTÉ was to go back and say ‘ok, if you have been an employee, we’ll give you all those rights and we’ll make it up for you now’, we would be bankrupt overnight because there were so many people treated like that.'

RTÉ’s director general admitted that should RTÉ make full restitution for its bogus self-employed workers, the broadcaster would “be bankrupt overnight”.

Speaking at a townhall meeting with employees last February, Kevin Bakhurst acknowledged that many RTÉ workers, who had for varying lengths of time been treated as self-employed contractors rather than full employees, had felt shortchanged by previous processes aimed at addressing the issue of bogus self-employment at the station.

Bogus self-employment involves a situation in which a worker is treated as self-employed despite performing the same tasks as a full employee but receiving none of the standard benefits of a PAYE worker, such as holiday and maternity pay, pension contributions, and even bereavement leave.

Under questioning from production designer Simone Delaney as to why RTÉ could not do the “morally correct” thing in terms of offering full compensation to its hundreds of formerly bogus self-employed workers, Mr Bakhurst replied, in the context that many workers had been incorrectly classified for decades, that: 

The honest thing is if RTÉ was to go back and say ‘ok, if you have been an employee, we’ll give you all those rights and we’ll make it up for you now’, we would be bankrupt overnight because there were so many people treated like that.

“If RTÉ has got things actually wrong, then we will look at that and see what we can do, but it is very hard to unpick stuff that has gone back 30 years or however long,” he said.

"I do stand for fairness and treating people properly and you know I want to do that as far as is humanly possible, but I am not sure we can address all the rights and wrongs of the past. I am not sure we can even afford to do it, is the honest answer,” Mr Bakhurst added.

Ms Delaney, meanwhile, noted that herself and “numerous other people who have worked here for decades, have had none of the rights of the staff sitting beside us”.

“Some of us have been here for 10, 20, 30 years and have no pensions,” she said, adding that for her the lack of bereavement leave for such workers was “particularly appalling”.

Mr Bakhurst had previously told Oireachtas committees that the expected liability for RTÉ on the back of its historical bogus self-employment problem would be in the region of €20m.

Mr Bakhurst succeeded Dee Forbes as director general in July 2023 amid the fall-out of a scandal involving undocumented payments to former star presenter Ryan Tubridy. 

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A review by the Department of Social Protection’s employment status section, known as Scope, of the situations of 700 RTÉ workers between 2019 and 2021 has been in progress for the past four years.

Asked about the interaction, an RTÉ spokesperson noted that Mr Bakhurst had “also stated that RTÉ continues to work hard to resolve the outstanding Scope cases, which is a complex process” and remains “a priority for RTÉ”.

When asked if Mr Bakhurst’s statements suggest that RTÉ considers that the need to remain solvent outweighs the legal rights of employees seeking restitution, the spokesperson said “we do not accept the premise contained” in the query.