TOP TEN RTÉ STARS SHARED €9.5M OVER THREE YEARS
Presenters share huge salaries despite station’s financial woes
RTÉ’S BIGGEST names have taken home some eyewatering salaries in recent years, with the top ten highest-paid presenters pocketing over €9.5 million over the course of three years.
The national broadcaster finally revealed yesterday who its top earners from 2017 to 2019 were. Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy received the biggest paycheque, earning €495,000 in 2019 alone.
The figures show that RTÉ paid the top ten earners a total of €3,219,738 in 2019 – despite serious financial troubles.
And members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said it was hard to justify the paycheques, given the broadcaster’s financial instability.
Only three on-air presenters are listed as employees of RTÉ, with the remaining listed as contractors with fees paid to their production companies.
Ryan Tubridy’s production company, Tuttle Productions, was paid €495,000 by RTÉ for the presenters’ services. The second highest-earning presenter was Ray D’Arcy at €450,000 followed by Liveline presenter Joe Duffy at €392,494, both of whom are classed as contractors.
Those top three highest-paid presenters have not changed between 2017 and 2019.
‘Fees under constant review’
Mr Duffy was the only one of the three to experience a decline in pay over the three years covered. In 2017, he earned €398,738, which rose to €404,988 before being cut in 2019.
Marian Finucane, who died last year, was paid €358,013 in 2019, which was up significantly from the €314,809 she earned in 2017 and the €333,013 she earned in 2018. Ms Finucane’s weekend radio slots were taken over by Brendan O’Connor, who earned €220,000 from RTÉ in 2019 before taking up the full-time role. How much he is earning since he took over the weekend radio shows last year has not been disclosed.
The highest-paid employee of RTÉ in 2019 was Seán O’Rourke, who retired from RTÉ last year and earned €327,988.
Prime Time presenter Miriam O’Callaghan earned €320,000 in 2019, up from €299,000 in 2017.
Claire Byrne, who took over the RTÉ Radio 1 slot from Mr O’Rourke last year, earned €250,000 from the national broadcaster in 2019, unchanged from 2018.
At ninth and tenth respectively on the list were the remaining two RTÉ employees, presenters Bryan Dobson and Mary Wilson. Mr Dobson, while working on Morning Ireland in 2019, earned €209,282 which hadn’t changed from 2018. He moved to the News At One last year. Mary Wilson,who moved to Morning Ireland from Drivetime last year, appears on the list for the first time since 2016, earning €196,961 in 2019.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy, a member of the PAC said the level of pay for these RTÉ presenters is ‘very hard to justify’ given its ‘perilous’ financial situation.
‘RTÉ is regularly seeking increases in the licence fee. It’s impossible to justify such increases which would be clearly impacting on the lowest-paid and most vulnerable families in our community at the same time as RTÉ presenters are earning half a million euro per year,’ he said.
Responding to queries as to why RTÉ had released the list on the day of the US presidential inauguration, a spokesman said: ‘On any given day there are very significant news events, from the daily news cycle related to Covid-19, extraordinary developments in US politics, the impacts of Brexit or the publication of a very significant Government report.’
However, co-leader of the Social Democrats Catherine Murphy said that RTÉ is in the media business and ‘they know a fast news day. It would surprise me if that didn’t occur to them’.
RTÉ said fees paid to the top earners were reduced by 15% in 2020. This 15% pay cut to the top ten earning presenters would only save the broadcaster €482,960 a year, based on the figures published yesterday.
However, figures for last year have not been provided.
Speaking yesterday, Director General of RTÉ Dee Forbes said: ‘RTÉ has reduced overall annual operating costs by over €100m since 2008, and last year targeted additional savings of €60m over three years, which we are on course to deliver. In that context, we continue to keep the fees of our highest-paid presenters under constant review,’ she said.