Reid and Gavin are tipped for RTE chair

FORMER HSE boss Paul Reid and ex-Dublin GAA manager Jim Gavin are frontrunners to be the new chair of RTÉ.

It comes as An Post chief David McRedmond confirmed he has ‘no interest’ in taking over from Siún Ní Raghallaigh, who resigned last week amid controversy over exit payments to departing executives.

It was initially thought Brian MacCraith, the Gaelic Players Association chair and former head of Dublin City University, who chaired the Commission on Media, would be selected. However, Government sources this weekend said support for Mr MacCraith has cooled.

One senior source told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘It’s a question of, do the skill sets fit? Being chair of RTÉ is not an academic-style post. You have to turn around a huge organisation careering towards bankruptcy; that can take out an embedded elite.’

The source said Mr MacCraith’s support for the national broadcaster to be directly funded by the Exchequer ‘would pose a problem; that is not where the game is at now’.

A Cabinet source said of the preference for Mr Gavin and Mr Reid, right: ‘This is a financial and restructuring project. You need someone discreet and strong-willed who is also politically astute and who has public confidence. Both Reid and Gavin have that.

‘Paul Reid is someone who possesses these traits. He has had a decade of crisis management with the HSE. If that hasn’t trained him up for RTÉ, nothing will.’

Meanwhile, David McRedmond – overlooked for the director general role in 2023 in favour of Kevin Bakhurst – ruled himself out.

‘No, I’ve absolutely no interest in that,’ he said when asked whether he would accept any invitation from Media Minister Catherine Martin to take up the post.

Mr McRedmond is credited with turning around the fortunes of a previously lossmaking An Post. A former head of TV3, now Virgin Media, he also applied for the job of director general in 2016, when Dee Forbes was ultimately hired.

‘I think I probably should have gotten an interview, but that’s another matter,’ he told The Business on RTÉ Radio

One at the time.