It would be pushing it to describe the 2023 Tubridy scandal as a tragedy, but there is definitely something of the farce about the fresh controversy over RTÉ presenter payments which has been greeted in some quarters as its sorry sequel. Last week’s decision to reclassify Derek Mooney from producer to presenter in the broadcaster’s annual earnings disclosure was greeted with a refrain of “Here we are yet again. Groundhog Day,” by media minister Patrick O’Donovan, while Taoiseach Micheál Martin said what had happened was “difficult to understand”.
It’s not really that difficult. Mooney, a fixture on the broadcaster’s list of top 10 highest-paid presenters for the decade up to 2015, had quietly vanished from that list for the following 10 years, only to reappear last Thursday following a management decision that, we are told, better reflects what he actually does for a living.
On the face of it, what RTÉ director general, Kevin Bakhurst and the board were doing was a relatively modest piece of housekeeping.
It started going wrong with an uncomfortable exchange between board chairman Terence O’Rourke and RTÉ’s Fran McNulty on Prime Time, and worsened in an unusually protracted Morning Ireland interview with Bakhurst by Sarah McInerney. The rest of Irish media, always alert to an RTÉ pay story, piled in with enthusiasm.
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Among the collateral damage were the payments made to Claire Byrne and Ray D’Arcy after both departed the Radio One airwaves last October. Their respective production companies received a combined €97,000 for the final two months of the year, during which neither was required to perform any duties. This was presented as a disgraceful waste of public money.
In fact, Byrne had given RTÉ considerable notice that she would not be renewing her contract. RTÉ was well aware it would be competing directly against her once she moved to Newstalk. The idea that it should simultaneously have been constructing a new morning schedule while she remained on air does not hold up.
As for D’Arcy, accounts from both sides make clear relations had deteriorated so badly by the time his departure was announced that insisting he complete his final weeks on air would have been a gamble unlikely to end well (although some listeners might have been entertained).
Bakhurst’s observation that a legal dispute would have cost considerably more is almost certainly true.
One of the arguments historically advanced for maintaining a contractor rather than employee relationship with high-profile presenters is precisely that it allows an organisation to respond when circumstances change. The D’Arcy situation was, by RTÉ’s standards, an unusually clear-eyed and ruthless application of that logic. The irony is that it is now being cited as evidence of mismanagement.
The Mooney situation is different, but there is a connection. RTÉ moved to recruit D’Arcy in 2015, offering him both a Saturday night television chat show and the Radio One afternoon slot that Mooney had occupied. Mooney, a staff employee rather than a contractor, transitioned to a new producer-presenter position.
What that role actually involved on a day-to-day basis over the decade that followed is not entirely clear. The title “executive producer” is elastic, covering everything from genuine senior responsibilities to what is in effect an honorific.
The practice of “red circling” occurs when an employee’s role changes to one that would normally attract a lower salary but their pay remains the same. It’s a not uncommon procedure, including in media organisations where careers can ebb and flow over decades, but not one companies are keen to highlight.
If the case for reclassifying Mooney rests purely on the argument that the public understand him to be a presenter, that is an uncomfortable basis for a financial disclosure decision. If it rests on the substance of his work, then RTÉ may now find itself forced to provide an account of why Mooney commands a salary of €202,000 (the broadcaster’s top scale for a producer is around €90,000).
Mooney, himself is perfectly entitled to come to the best arrangement he can with his employer.
There is a further contradiction in RTÉ’s approach to presenter pay transparency. Shortly after taking up his post, Bakhurst announced that no presenter would in future earn more than his own salary of €250,000. Some contractors noted at the time that this comparison was not quite as straightforward as it appeared, since it set their gross fees against a figure that excluded the pension contributions, car allowance and other benefits that actually bring Bakhurst’s total remuneration to approximately €340,000.
Meanwhile, staff presenters in the top 10, including George Lee and Darragh Maloney, have their total packages disclosed in what is not a like-for-like comparison. Whether this anomaly is deliberate or accidental, it is misleading.
The reclassification of Derek Mooney was a reasonable attempt to tidy up an outstanding bit of bad business from RTÉ’s previous regime. The problem is that even minor revelations of this sort can prompt more questions about how it did its business in the past.
Speaking on Radio One’s Today with Cormac Ó hEadhra on Saturday, Labour TD Marie Sherlock raised the case of Seán Rocks, who presented Arena, RTÉ’s flagship arts programme, until his sudden death last year. Sherlock suggested that Rocks, a warm, deeply knowledgeable and widely admired broadcaster, had been maintained on a producer’s salary with some additional allowances throughout his presenting career.
If accurate, that would imply he was paid considerably less than half of what several of his peers were receiving, despite the fact he was doing work of comparable or arguably greater public value.
RTÉ management should be prepared to defend their recent decisions more robustly than they have managed so far. The Mooney reclassification may well turn out to be the minor matter that Bakhurst insists it is. But broader questions remain about how the broadcaster values the people who work for it.
