RTÉ must disclose salaries of top 100,insist three ministers
State broadcaster under growing pressure to open its payroll books after row over gender bias at BBC
THREE Cabinet ministers have added to growing pressure on RTÉ to disclose what it pays its top 100 stars in the wake of the precedent set this week by the BBC.
The State broadcaster only reveals its top 10 earners bi-annually and argues that further revelations would be commercially damaging.
However, this position has been seriously eroded by the decision of the BBC to end its non-disclosure policy.
Communications Minister Denis Naughten has now indicated that he wants RTÉ to publish the pay scales of its staff.
Culture Minister Heather Humphreys has also told the Irish Mail on Sunday that she believes the figures should be published in the interests of tackling gender pay
‘We need information, openness and disclosure’
bias. Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan endorsed that view.
Demands for greater transparency within RTÉ have also been significantly strengthened by the serious gender bias in pay that was revealed by the BBC’s figures.
The most recent figures from RTÉ suggest that those who believe there is no gender discrimination in stars’ pay at the Irish broadcaster are being overly optimistic.
In 2014, just two women were in the RTÉ top ten – Marian Finucane, on €295,000, and Miriam O’Callaghan, on €280,445.
Mr Naughten has now said that he is ‘in favour of RTÉ publishing the salaries of its top presenters’.
Ms Humphreys said ‘I would be very keen to be reassured that the endemic bias evident in the BBC is not present in RTÉ.
‘The Government is very proactive on these issues and I have recently gone to all cultural institutions and instructed them to review their policies and status on gender balance.’
Mr Flanagan said: ‘Gender pay inequality is one of today’s big issues and as Equality Minister, it is one of my priorities.’
In relation to RTÉ, he said: ‘To assess the extent, we need information, openness and disclosure.’
Fianna Fáil’s communications spokesman Timmy Dooley has also called on RTÉ director-general Dee Forbes to ‘carry out a full audit in order to ensure that RTÉ is not experiencing the same endemic sexism as the BBC’.
He added: ‘We need a declaration by Dee Forbes, based on this audit, that no outdated practices are occurring in RTÉ.’
A key part of this would be ‘full disclosure by RTÉ of its top 100 salaries – not just the current top 10’.
Mr Naughten was strongly backed by the Independent Alliance minister Finian McGrath, who said: ‘I am in favour of RTÉ stars being as open and accountable as TDs and ministers.
‘We are both paid by the taxpayer, so I think any yearly disclosure of the rates of pay in RTÉ is a great idea.’
However, RTÉ, which has lost €100m in revenue since 2008, has ‘no plans’ to release the salaries of its top earners until later this year. One intriguing side-effect of this is that details of Ray D’Arcy’s pay packet will not be released until then, three years after he returned to the station in 2014. It has been argued that publication of the list would create a ‘poacher’s charter’ and drive up salaries. However, senior sources within the Government have noted: ‘The strength of that position has been eroded by the failure of previously high-profile RTÉ transfers, like Pat Kenny, to “move the dial”.’ One senior minister said: ‘The myth that presenters carry around fans with them has been exposed, so there is no compelling case for secrecy on those grounds, given that no-one can afford to poach RTÉ stars any more.
‘RTÉ must realise that it is playing in the broadcasting equivalent of the League of Ireland, not the Premier
‘This is League of Ireland, not the Premier League’
League, and therefore must cut its salary cloth accordingly.’
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan called for RTÉ to make public the salaries of what the State broadcaster calls its ‘top talent’.
He sits on the Oireachtas Commit-
tee, which two weeks ago heard RTÉ’s director-general Dee Forbes plead for an increase in the licence fee.
He said: ‘It should release the salaries in the same week as the BBC. This thing of always doing it two years behind, it should get rid of that. RTÉ should release the details of 2015 and 2016 at the same time.
‘At the moment, we only know what was paid in 2014, three years ago and that is not acceptable.’
Mr Ryan also said that RTÉ needed to move away from the ‘big salaries’, which saw presenters like Ryan Tubridy earn close to €500,000 and Joe Duffy €415,000.
The latest available figures also show that Marian Finucane earned just under €300,000. She hosts two radio shows a week, each less than two hours long.
‘In the current climate, where media organisations are seeing falling advertising revenues everywhere, you can’t justify those kind of salaries,’ said Mr Ryan.
‘The truth is that there is no competition for these presenters. Nobody else in Ireland can afford to pay those kind of wages, so where else are they going to go?’
TV3 remains the only private competitor to RTÉ, while TG4 is State-funded.
Meanwhile, the BBC earns about 20 times the public income that RTÉ gets from its licence fee.
Taking this into account, many question the inflated salaries of RTÉ’s ‘stars’.
However, Ms Forbes says they are worth it. Speaking earlier this month, the RTÉ director-general said: ‘This [pay to top earners] is about 1% of RTÉ’s total cost base. Our top talent is no longer the only talent in Ireland and to ensure that you have strong voices and faces of the organisation, talent is important.
‘These people work incredibly hard for us. It was the right thing to do to reduce their salaries. We have to keep that in check as we go through the changes.’
An RTÉ spokesman this weekend denied that the organisation was dragging its feet on releasing details of its presenters and said it was meeting its commitments.
He said: ‘In line with our public commitment, RTÉ has been publishing details of its top earners for a number of years and has published figures for 2008-2014.
‘Contrary to some media reports, RTÉ has confirmed that it will release details of its top 10 earners for 2015 later this year, following last year’s publication of figures for 2014.
‘RTÉ has reduced the fees paid to top talent by 40% since 2008.
‘The total top 10 presenter earnings for 2014 represents less than 1% of RTÉ’s total operating costs in 2014 and less than 2% of total personnel-related operating costs.’
‘There is no competition for these presenters’