So long, Siún – now RTÉ needs to find a chair who can make real changes
ON Thursday afternoon, RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst already had one of the most secure jobs in Irish public life, despite considerable anger among Government ministers about his role in giving executive Rory Coveney his departure payoff and the way this was revealed last Saturday.
By yesterday morning, following the overnight removal of his chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh, he was even more unsackable.
The Government cannot lose him as well as her. Filling her job will be very tough but doable; finding an appropriately qualified new DG in these circumstances would be next to impossible.
Job security doesn’t necessarily give him much power, though, not with RTÉ in the state it’s in.
Indeed, the question may become whether he will want to stay for too much longer. That’s not to suggest that he is a quitter; on the contrary, he appears utterly committed to seeing out the job, and all the evidence is
McRedmond interview seemed like box-ticking
that he places a high value on public service. But a new chairperson might take a very different approach to solving the RTÉ crisis, one that might not be in keeping with Bakhurst’s vision as agreed with his departed chair. His coming months have become even more difficult.
It is highly likely that the Government’s attitude towards rescuing RTÉ is hardening, and this should be reflected in the appointment of Ní Raghallaigh’s successor. The Government may look now for deeper cuts than Bakhurst and his departed chairwoman have suggested to date, especially as it will be reluctant to annually turn over hundreds of millions of euro to a delinquent organisation, no matter how important its services are deemed.
Accordingly, a new chairperson might have a different relationship with the Englishman.
The plans he had been drawing up with his departed chair may face amendment.
The DG paid a glowing tribute to Ní Raghallaigh in a staff memo yesterday morning (as did the independent board directors, who also decided that they would not be leaving with her in protest at what was essentially her ejection via TV interview, ironically on RTÉ). Bakhurst’s support was not a surprise, because he was her appointment. She gave him a job he clearly craved, unfinished business from the time former chair Moya Doherty gave it, disastrously, to Dee Forbes instead of promoting him. He owed her the loyalty of a fond farewell.
That’s not to say that he was the wrong selection as DG but he was not the outstanding candidate, as some members of the board argued strongly last year.
RTÉ had the option of giving the job to David McRedmond, the former chief executive at TV3 (now known as Virgin Media) and current boss at An Post.
McRedmond had relevant media experience in the commercial sector but also believed in public service broadcasting, and had transformed the financial performance of the mail-delivery company through tough but fair moves.
He got one interview for the
RTÉ job and that was it. It was one more than when Forbes got the job seven years ago.
This interview had all the appearances of a box-ticking exercise and the word from within RTÉ was that some executives were determined that he would not be allowed into the station and that Ní Raghallaigh, perhaps feeling he was not a DG who would be easily controlled, acquiesced. That McRedmond was not presented to the board as an option was extraordinary, as some directors complained privately at the time.
Bakhurst was perceived to have the advantage of prior knowledge of the station and knew what needed to be done. But his expertise was in editorial and, in his most recent job back in the UK, in regulation. It was not in cost cutting. Maybe Ní Raghallaigh, as an accountant, saw herself as leading the charge on that one, but the evidence to date was of a softlysoftly approach.
There has been an extraordinary slowness in addressing the cost reductions required at an organisation that would be insolvent were it not for the infusions of cash from the Government to keep the doors open. To announce 40 redun- dancies among 1,900 people in the first year of a crisis would not happen in a privately owned organisation, hard as it will be for those who lose their jobs. Giving itself four years to cut 20% of the headcount would not be allowed in any commercial body. Just because RTÉ provides public services should not make it exempt from economic realities.
This was just one of the many doubts that emerged about Ní Raghallaigh. In retrospect, she handled disclosure of the Ryan Tubridy payments appallingly, contributing to great and unnecessary confusion.
She was a lousy communicator in her radio and television interviews; this might not matter in many companies, but RTÉ is in the communications business and needed someone more authoritative in their delivery, given its prominence in Irish life.
There’s already a ‘she said, she said’ row about what she told Media Minister Catherine Martin about the board’s knowledge of a payoff for former chief financial officer Richard Collins.
However, Ní Raghallaigh shot herself in the foot by acknowledging she ‘neglected to recollect’ that she had overseen the Collins deal during meetings with the minister on Monday and Wednesday. While officials in the department may have been told on October 10 – and the nature of the message is in dispute – it was surely incumbent on the chair to remind the minister of this during this week’s meetings, not to come back and correct the record on Thursday.
It is now up to the Government to turn this into an opportunity, to put somebody in the chair who will force RTÉ to face up to reality. Just who that will be is anybody’s guess. Finding the right chairperson with the requisite ability to conduct change and to communicate effectively, both within RTÉ and outside, is going to be essential before the Government announces its long-overdue refinancing and restructuring of RTÉ.