RTÉ has 'paid the price for being transparent' over presenter pay, Kevin Bakhurst says
RTÉ deputy director general Adrian Lynch, director general Kevin Bakhurst, and board chairman Terence O'Rourke arriving for a meeting with communications minister Patrick O'Donovan. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
RTÉ has “paid the price for transparency" by revealing Derek Mooney was not included in the broadcaster's top 10 highest-earning presenters, its director general has claimed.
Kevin Bakhurst said the controversy which followed the revelations was “not an incentive to be more transparent", which he said is disappointing for RTÉ, as the organisation wanted to be more candid.
“We have paid a price for that transparency here,” Mr Bakhurst said, speaking after a meeting with media minister Patrick O’Donovan.
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“It’s a bit frustrating, but we’re going to carry on doing it. We want this to be a really transparent, accountable organisation.” He added the issue with Mr Mooney was a “one-off” the broadcaster had uncovered.
RTÉ confirmed last Thursday that it had revisited its list of top 10 highest-earning presenters to include Mr Mooney after reconsidering “what constitutes a presenter”.
Mr Mooney had been reclassified as a producer in 2020, so as a result was not included among the top paid presenters.
Asked afterwards about Mr Bakhurst’s comments around paying the price for its transparency, Mr O’Donovan said he did not accept it “at all”.
“I think at the end of the day, RTÉ is a really integral part of the Irish media landscape and three years ago, when they ran into difficulties that are all very well enunciated at this stage, the Government didn’t punish them,” Mr O’Donovan said.
However, Mr O’Donovan said the meeting with Mr Bakhurst had been “very positive”, adding there would be further scrutiny at the Oireachtas media committee on Wednesday.
RTÉ bosses met with the communications minister amid fresh scrutiny of its financial management.
Station director general, Kevin Bakhurst, deputy director general Adrian Lynch, and board chairman Terence O’Rourke arrived together for the meeting with Patrick O’Donovan and his officials in Dublin on Tuesday evening.
The meeting came after Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald clashed in the Dáil over the governance of RTÉ.
Ms McDonald said RTÉ top brass “believe the rules don’t apply to them”, while “working people playing by the rules” had been “abandoned by Government”.
She called on the Government to “sort this out” as she demanded “accountability and consequences”.
Ms McDonald criticised the previous coalition’s €725m support package for the crisis-stricken broadcaster.
She said: “All of us were led to believe that the bargain with RTÉ was as follows: That they would be bailed out, that they would be funded, that public broadcasting would be absolutely supported, and that by way of return, there would be a change in behaviour and culture, there would be appropriate standards, accurate and transparent rewarding.
“And we now know that that is not the case.”
During Leaders’ Questions, Ms McDonald asked the Taoiseach: “Do you accept that your failure to act decisively has allowed this bad behaviour at RTÉ — this culture of entitlement — to continue?”
In response, Mr Martin charged Sinn Féin with wanting to “blame the Government” for everything State agencies do.
He said her position was akin to asking the Government to run RTÉ.
“Is that what you’re actually saying — that politicians should actually go in there and run the national public service broadcaster?”
He added: “I know you have to do this for electoral reasons and politics and play the game, but there’s a serious undercurrent here, and coming from the Sinn Féin party — that creates its own challenges.”
Mr Martin said what had happened at RTÉ was “unacceptable” and said Communications Minister Patrick O’Donovan was meeting with RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst and chairman Terence O’Rourke.
He also said any delay in the legislation to move RTÉ under the Comptroller & Auditor General also involved “considerable time” in pre-legislative scrutiny, which also involved Sinn Féin.
“That’s the kind of dishonesty that is characterising every one of your presentations in recent times at Leaders’ Questions.
“You don’t really care about the truth anymore. It’s just whenever something breaks out, let’s have a go at the Government, let’s blame the government, and that’s it.”
Mr Martin said there was a need for “far more transparency” in RTÉ.
On the funding issue, he said he did not agree that public service broadcasting should be abandoned altogether and defended the support package.
The exchange in the Dáil came after the Government approved legislation to move RTÉ under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Ms McDonald welcomed the development but said it was “long overdue”.
The Taoiseach also said there was a need for sensitivity in the relationship between the political system and RTÉ.
Earlier, Mr O’Donovan, the communications minister, claimed he was dropped from an interview with RTÉ's Morning Ireland on Tuesday with only a few minutes' notice.
“I was due to be on RTÉ, but a minute to being on RTÉ, for some reason, I was declined,” he told .
In a statement issued later, RTÉ said: "The minister engaged with our sports presenter about an interview in relation to a swimming pool in the west of Ireland for the sports bulletin. An editorial decision was taken not to proceed with the interview as proposed."
Mr O'Donovan said the public should know what everyone in RTÉ is earning, which was why RTÉ was “coming under” the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG). This was being “taken care of today under the Broadcasting Amendment Bill.
“I'm bringing forward proposals to have the C&AG appointed as the auditor. So I think that in many ways we'll arrest an awful lot of these questions that continue to come up time in, time out," said Mr O'Donovan.
"Why is it that the auditor didn't see this, that, or the other thing?
“From now on, the members of the public accounts committee will have direct engagement with the auditor, who will be the C&AG.
"And the Comptroller & Auditor General will on an annualised basis go to the accounts, present them and any outstanding issues and it'll be up to the members of the public accounts committee then to dissect them, which should be the case for every penny of public money that's been put, as I said a while ago.”
Mr O’Donovan is due to meet with RTÉ bosses on Tuesday amid further financial issues at the national broadcaster.
“We’ve been down this road before, and here we are again,” he said ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
It comes after RTÉ confirmed on Thursday that it had revised its list of the top 10 highest-earning presenters for 2024 to include Derek Mooney after it “reconsidered what constitutes a presenter”.
Mr O'Donovan said RTÉ staff are “very aggrieved” and said he had received anonymous correspondence from staff at RTÉ.
“There is a lot of hurt in the organisation because people thought this is the end of it, and clearly it is not.” He said there can not be a “vacuum” in the company and said they cannot have a “relationship built on revelation”.
Meanwhile, on his way into Cabinet, Tanáiste Simon Harris said there needed to be an end to the drip feeding of information from RTÉ.
“What we need now is none of this drip feed, none of this will there be another revelation, no salacious detail, we just need facts, information and transparency. That is in the interest of public service broadcasting.
"I believe it's in the interest of RTÉ and I believe it's in the interest of fairness and transparency and I think the Broadcasting Bill by empowering the C&AG to have a role here will actually help strengthen RTÉ in time and will help, I suppose, provide that assurance, that external assurance that I think is needed too.”
Mr Harris added that there appears to be “an upstairs-downstairs” situation in RTÉ and that fairness and transparency were needed to ensure “we don’t have Groundhog Day”.
“I think there’s a lot of hard work and decent people in RTÉ who will feel let down by this latest set of revelations,” he said.
“I don’t want to push to personalise it to anyone, because I think that serves no purpose, but it’s beginning to look like there’s a little bit of an upstairs-downstairs situation going on in RTÉ, that certain producers can be over here, and that’s not fair. It’s not fair in any organisation."
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