Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers was “not prepared to give consent” for a multiannual voluntary exit programme for staff at RTÉ, newly released official documents show.
The Department of Public Expenditure said in a letter in March to the Department of Arts and Media that any such move would “deviate from the typical approach to exit schemes in the commercial semi-State sector and may pose challenges in terms of the oversight of the scheme’s implementation”.
The letter said the Minister believed “RTÉ may seek consent for a further voluntary exit programme in 2026”.
Former Minister for Arts and Media Catherine Martin gave her approval for the RTÉ redundancy scheme last year but the Department of Public Expenditure had sought further clarification on issues before final authorisation was granted at the end of March.
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As part of its sanction, the Department of Public Expenditure said the Department of Arts and Media must be satisfied that implementing the scheme “would not lead to additional direct exchequer funding in 2025, 2026 and 2027”.
“There should be no presumption as to what Government may decide as to any exchequer funding for RTÉ in 2026 and 2027.”
It said the Department of Arts and Media and RTÉ “should not make any assumptions about the front-loading early in either 2026 or 2027 of any exchequer funding as a primary mitigating measure to cash exposure”.
“The exclusion of senior management from the voluntary exit programme is approved on the basis of RTÉ’s assurances that there will be no further voluntary exits from the leadership team. If this changes during 2025 any exit package will follow the terms of voluntary exit programme 2025.”
It said the Department of Arts and Media “must be informed before any exit package being agreed with a member of the leadership team”.
Official correspondence shows the Department of Public Expenditure was anxious over a number of months that the proposed redundancy scheme at RTÉ should not be open-ended.
In January it told the Department of Arts and Media it would be necessary for it to review and reauthorise any scheme on an annual basis.
“This may involve changes to the scheme to control costs,” it said.
The Department of Public Expenditure said staff at RTÉ should be made aware that the terms of exit scheme being run in 2025 were “specific to this iteration” and there were no guarantees that scheme or the terms on offer initially would be maintained in later years.
On February 24th the secretary general of the Department of Arts and Media, Feargal Ó Coigligh, said in a letter to the Department of Public Expenditure: “While I appreciate that multiannual voluntary exit programmes have not been previously sanctioned, as has been set out in previous submissions, a degree of flexibility is required to enable the transition from in-house to commissioned and independently produced content. This is a process which requires lead-in times for replacement content, and by virtue of the voluntary nature of the exit scheme, the potential redeployment of resources within RTÉ.”
RTÉ said last Friday it had received 325 applications for its voluntary exit programme. The scheme formed part of a five-year strategy announced in 2023 where the broadcaster outlined a plan to reduce staff numbers by up to 400.
In an email to staff last Friday RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst said applications to leave under the programme would be approved where “it is confirmed that the role can be suppressed or that equivalent savings can be made by suppressing an alternative post and/or redeploying an employee into that role”.
