Heather got it right: Cut your cloth, RTÉ, and stop bleating
HEATHER Humphreys brought some proper Protestant prudence to bear on the debate about the financially banjaxed RTÉ and the station’s plans for 200 job losses and other cuts to sort things out.
On Morning Ireland the Business Minister bluntly told RTÉ that, like any business, they need to ‘cut their cloth to measure’.
Humphreys’ dismissal of the broadcaster’s weelah-woe narrative about how times are terribly difficult, how the media landscape is so unpredictable and how they’ve been tormented for years by an ungrateful government that simply refuses to impose properly the licence fee tax was fairly brutal.
Humphreys – to her credit – wasn’t in any mood for all that aul’ caterwauling.
Then…bang!
She observed how some people on the Donnybrook campus were pulling bigger wages than the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar (€207,590), UK prime minister Boris Johnson (€184,000) and the US president, Donal Trump (€362,000).
She was obviously referring to the €495,000 lashed out to Ryan Tubridy in 2016, the €450,000 paid to Ray D’Arcy and the €390,000 income for Joe Duffy. It’s worth recalling also that in 2016 Sean O’Rourke took home €309,000, Miriam O’Callaghan was on €299,000, Marian Finucane pulled in €301,000 and Claire Byrne earned €216,000.
Morning Ireland presenter
Bryan Dobson, who was part of the team that discussed all this bad news on Thursday morning, was paid €198,000 in 2016 when he was a prime television news anchor.
It’s not known how his salary has fared since moving over to radio.
In the light of all that, RTÉ’s attempt to persuade the Government to impose a higher tax for the licence fee is a complete non-runner.
Anyway, RTÉ’s own 2018 Annual Report proves the case against any financial bailout.
And the most fundamental point is that operating costs increased during 2018 from €335m to €340m when they should have been heading dramatically in the other direction.
The tentative, multiple-surgery approach to curing RTÉ’s current woes has drained politicians’ confidence that financial rigour will ever be imposed there.
And while that continues, RTÉ can forget about finding a pot of gold at the end of the licence-fee rainbow.