RTÉ is set to wind down its in-house television documentary unit as it continues to find cost savings after the financial and governance crisis that shook the national broadcaster in 2023.
Sources within the organisation told The Irish Times that the unit’s approximately 10 staff were informed of plans to change operations on Wednesday.
RTÉ is understood to have told them they will be able to finish any current projects, after which there will be opportunities for redeployment within the organisation.
A spokesman for RTÉ said on Wednesday evening that the broadcaster will commission more documentaries externally. No jobs will be lost other than those of staff members already availing of the organisation’s voluntary redundancy scheme.
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“We have spoken to the in-house documentary team about some changes to how we will produce documentaries for RTÉ television and RTÉ Player next year,” the spokesman said.
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He said that due to voluntary exits within the unit, “we are reassigning some people to different production roles and commissioning some additional documentary content from the independent sector”.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the RTÉ group of trade unions said the decision shows the broadcaster “has learned nothing” two years on from the crisis.
The trade union group, which includes the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Siptu, Connect and Unite, accused RTÉ management of using the fallout from the scandal “to hollow out the organisation, selling it off bit by bit”.
The union spokesperson said: “Instead of a return to the core values of our public-service remit, we have dramatically increased commercialisation, with whole swathes of the organisation now being primed for outsourcing.
“RTE’s flagship TV documentary unit is just the latest to be earmarked for complete closure. This follows the closure of RTE’s religion department, as well as plans to hand both Fair City and The Late Late Show over to the private, for-profit sector.
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“All this is at the expense of stable jobs in the sector, to be replaced by more precarious short-term employment.”
RTÉ said it is committed to Irish documentary-making despite the reassignment of staff.
“In 2025, we will broadcast 72 hours of documentary programmes, with around nine hours made by in-house teams,” the organisation’s spokesman said. “Next year, we are planning to offer Irish audiences around 75 hours of commissioned documentaries produced by the Irish production sector.”
The in-house documentary unit is the latest department in the RTÉ to face effective closure.
In May, RTÉ announced plans to switch production of some religious programming, specifically “Christian worship content”, to outside producers. Although the department has retained a commissioning editor, it means Masses will no longer be broadcast from Donnybrook and instead will be produced by churches nationwide.
In the same month, RTÉ announced that Upfront with Katie Hannon would not return for a new season in September.
RTÉ has also set out plans to switch the production of Fair City and The Late Late Show from its Montrose base in Dublin to external producers in the future.
