PAC cracks down on RTÉ with much tighter controls
A CRACKDOWN on RTÉ excess will start with the return of the station’s supervision by the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The restoration of the supervisory role will be a key element of the long-awaited PAC report into RTÉ, which is due for publication tomorrow.
It will contain over 20 recommendations with the key one being that RTÉ would report regularly to the PAC as well as the Oireachtas Media Committee.
The PAC is expected to recommend all future exit packages are reported, and none can include a non-disclosure agreement.
It will also seek to ensure all salaried positions of over €150,000-a-year are reported.
PAC chairman Brian Stanley told RTÉ the recommendations are ‘reasonable, fair but firm’.
In an indication of the gathering chill between RTÉ and the State, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar signalled on several occasions that the Government is likely to accept the proposal.
Speaking on The Week in Politics yesterday, Simon Harris said: ‘Putting RTÉ back under the control of the Comptroller and Auditor General [C&AG] is the sensible thing to do.’
A Government source told the Mail: ‘A crackdown is needed for that station. It needs to be brought back into the normal world. We are bleeding politically because of its exploits.’
In an indication of the growing political hostility towards the broadcaster, the Government is moving towards appointing a ‘bruiser’ as the new chairperson.
This has been accompanied by unease over the power wielded by director general Kevin Bakhurst.
Chair of the Media Committee Niamh Smyth said RTÉ should ‘disclose the salaries and benefits of the top-tier executives’.
She continued: ‘Their salaries, the top ones, and the skill sets that merit these salaries should be on the public record.’
A number of senior executives will also be nervously awaiting the PAC Report. Brian Stanley previously informed the Mail that when it comes to the Toy Show The Musical debacle, ‘those senior executives who are still in RTE who were central to this need to consider their positions’.
He said if the PAC report is implemented in full, it will ‘draw a line’ under the crisis. Independent TD and PAC member Verona Murphy said bringing RTÉ back under the remit of the C&AG is the ‘number one priority’, but she added the other recommendations from the committee need to be implemented too.
Fine Gael PAC member Colm Burke says the C&AG recommendation
‘There must be full transparency’
must be adopted: ‘RTÉ is receiving a substantial portion of its income from the taxpayers, therefore there must be full transparency... including coming back under the C&AG.’
Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy, who is vice-chair of PAC, said the report has drawn on hearings as well as independent reports commissioned by RTÉ, such as McCann Fitzgerald’s examination of voluntary exit programmes at the station.