RTÉ chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh will be questioned at a hearing of the Oireachtas media committee next Wednesday about recent leaks relating to the RTÉ board’s delayed appointment of a new director general.
Ms Ní Raghallaigh’s invitation to the committee was made before media reports of disunity within the board of RTÉ about the process to select a successor to outgoing director general Dee Forbes.
Members of the committee are expected to raise the matter, however, amid concern about the confidentiality of the process.
A new director general could be in place before the committee hearing, which is due to cover a broader range of funding and policy issues, including licence fee reform, support for Irish language broadcasting and the recent establishment of a new media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán.
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The scheduled hearing comes shortly after Ms Ní Raghallaigh and two other RTÉ board members on the selection panel chose former RTÉ news and current affairs managing director Kevin Bakhurst as their preferred candidate to lead the public-service broadcaster.
But this decision was not approved at a meeting of the RTÉ board last Friday said to have been “pretty fraught”, with a small number of board members querying why a more transformational figure had not been selected.
This was understood to refer to the unsuccessful candidacy of An Post chief executive David McRedmond, although his name was not directly mentioned.
The appointment of Mr Bakhurst is nevertheless likely to be approved by the RTÉ board at its next meeting and signed off by the Cabinet when it meets next week.
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The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media, chaired by Fianna Fáil TD Niamh Smyth, will mark Ms Ní Raghallaigh’s first outing as RTÉ chairwoman since being appointed to the position last November.
She has not publicly commented about her role or the future of the organisation since Minister for Media Catherine Martin’s announcement that she would succeed Moya Doherty as RTÉ chair.
Ms Ní Raghallaigh’s main task in recent months has been the appointment of the next director general, with the former TG4 chairwoman and Ardmore Studios and Troy Studios chief executive initiating the process to replace Ms Forbes in early January.
Ms Forbes, the former managing director of Discovery Networks Northern Europe, became director general in 2016 and her seven-year term expires this July. Mr Bakhurst, who joined RTÉ from the BBC in 2012, was also a candidate in 2016 and left shortly after to take up a role at British media regulator Ofcom.
A spokesman for RTÉ said it would not be appropriate to comment on the process to appoint a director general as it is ongoing.
