Goan defends RTÉ's financial state and pay of presenters

THERE WILL be an “amount of hysteria” when the salaries of RTÉ’s top presenters are published in the organisation’s annual report, director general Cathal Goan said yesterday.

Mr Goan defended RTÉ’s financial position, saying there was no crisis and that a €68 million shortfall in revenue this year was being dealt with.

However, he faced criticisms from members of the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources about the level of top presenters’ salaries in RTÉ.

The latest figures for 2006 show that former Late Late Show presenter Pat Kenny earned €849,139, followed by Gerry Ryan on €558,990 and Marian Finucane on €455,190.

RTÉ agreed in 2001 to publish the salaries of its top 10 earners two years retrospectively. The figures for 2007 will be contained in the RTÉ annual report which is currently with the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

Committee chairman MJ Nolan said that six-figure salaries to “a select few seem disproportionate and unjustifiable” in the current climate.

Labour TD Liz McManus said RTÉ should be taking a lead from BBC on the issue of top earners. BBC director general Mark Thompson on Monday told its top-paid presenters that the era of big pay deals was over and presenters would face pay cuts of between 25 per cent and 40 per cent.

Ms McManus said it was an “affront for people to be earning enormous sums of money at a time when people on relatively modest levels of salary in RTÉ are facing pay cuts”.

Fine Gael TD Noel Coonan described salary levels as “obscene”, Fianna Fáil TD Peter Kelly said they were “unjustified” while Independent Senator Joe O’Toole said RTÉs attempts to negotiate a voluntary cut in salary from top-paid presenters instead of imposing it on them was “unreal stuff”.

Mr Goan said the figures when they are published will be for 2007 and not 2009 (all the top presenters have volunteered a 10 per cent pay cut) and that the whole issue had generated “more heat than light”.

“I’m not going to say any more about the salaries or the fees of top talent because they are confidential,” he added.

Mr Goan said there was “absolutely no truth” in suggestions which surfaced in other media that the station could go bankrupt and that a projected €68 million shortfall in revenue this year was actually closer to €100 million.

RTÉ had a revenue shortfall of €26 million last year, but broke even, as it is legally obliged to do, by cutting management bonuses and making other cost savings, he told the committee.

Mr Goan said there was “no denying” that RTÉ was in difficult times as a result of a shortfall in commercial revenue, but there was no crisis as had been portrayed.

“It would be a crisis if we had not identified the scale of the challenge we all face and if we had not clearly signalled the proactive ways in which we intend to deal with it,” he explained.

RTÉ staff are currently involved in a ballot on pay cuts from 2.6 per cent for any staff earning over €25,000 a year to 12.5 per cent for those earning more than €255,000 a year which would save the company €10 million a year.

Mr Goan said the pay cuts were the “best option” to maintain jobs and services at the broadcaster.

He also revealed that there will be an early retirement scheme offered to staff, but refused to be drawn on questions from Fine Gael TD Michael D’Arcy as to whether a rejection of the pay cuts would lead to voluntary or compulsory redundancies.

“When they have made that decision, we will deal with the consequences of that. Before that it is invidious to talk any more than that,” he said.