RTÉ bosses to face media minister over Derek Mooney payments furore

The latest revelations prompted a scathing response from Patrick O’Donovan

RTÉ CEO Kevin Bakhurst is among the top executives called before the media committee. File picture: Niall Carson/PA 

RTÉ bosses will meet with media minister Patrick O’Donovan on Tuesday amid yet another controversy around the national broadcaster’s finances.

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 Mooney was reclassified as a producer in 2020, so had not been accounted for in the list of RTÉ’s highest-paid presenters.

The revision places him eighth on the updated 2024 list, with earnings of just over €197,000, and seventh in 2025, with earnings exceeding €202,000.

Last week, RTÉ confirmed it had received permission from Mr Mooney to publish details of his full salary between 2020 and 2023.

He earned €195,079 in 2020, €187,854 in 2021, €188,885 in 2022, and €192,592 in 2023.

These earnings would have earned him a spot in the top 10 highest-paid stars list for each year between 2020 and 2023.

The latest revelations prompted a scathing response from Mr O’Donovan, who said he would call director general Kevin Bakhurst, RTÉ chairman Terence O’Rourke, and other officials to a meeting today to confirm what had happened.

Government sources said Mr O’Donovan “has been clear in his remarks to date that he expects full pay transparency to be provided for all levels of RTÉ, including all management, executive, production staff, journalists, and any other types of employees”.

It is also understood that the minister has asked that, where people or their associated businesses are employed on a contract basis, the total amount they receive as part of that contract be added to and considered along with any salary or remuneration already being received by them from RTÉ.

Broadcasting Amendment Bill

The meeting comes as Mr O’Donovan brings the Broadcasting Amendment Bill to Cabinet on Tuesday, seeking government approval to publish it. The bill provides for the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) to begin auditing RTÉ from 2027.

Mr O’Donovan is seeking to expedite this, with a view to starting with the 2026 accounts, due to the “serious issues and concerns arising from recent revelations regarding pay classification at the broadcaster”.

On RTÉ radio last week, Mr O’Donovan said he wants to ascertain what the public spending on RTÉ staff is.

“I also don’t want to know monies without total packages. I think we’ve moved on way too far from that,” said Mr O’Donovan.

He said he believed that the issue had the capacity to once again damage public confidence in RTÉ.

I’m trying to get people to buy the television licence.

“I’m trying to get people to have faith in the public service broadcaster. We’re trying to get people to go back into their post office and pay their licence fee. And, you know, invariably, people are going to ask for what?

“Here we are yet again, Groundhog Day, explaining something that, to be quite honest about, I thought after giving the company €750m, that we had moved on from that, and that we had moved to a position where there was full disclosure.”

It was also revealed last week that The Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty was paid an extra €23,000 across 2024 and 2025 for presenting programmes beyond his standard contract.

'Upstairs-downstairs' at RTÉ - Harris

Tanaiste Simon Harris has said there appears to be “an upstairs-downstairs” situation in RTÉ and said fairness and transparency were needed to ensure “we don’t have Groundhog Day”.

He was speaking ahead of Cabinet considering legislation that would move RTÉ under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

“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.

“So, there’s a fairness issue here, there’s a transparency issue here, and then there’s just an accuracy issue here, fairness, transparency, and accuracy. And we need all three of them to ensure we don’t have Groundhog Day.” He added: “I just think, as people turned on their radio or their television over the weekend – forget politics – I just think most Irish people are like ‘here we go again’.”

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