RTÉ DIRECTOR GENERAL Kevin Bakhurst and deputy director Adrian Lynch spent hours at the Oireachtas media committee today facing questions about pay, job classifications, and how RTÉ has managed its staff.

Here’s what happened.

1. Tommy Tiernan’s show costs thousands, but he’ll never appear on the highest earners list

Fianna Fáil TD Peter ‘Chap’ Cleere raised Tommy Tiernan’s television show (The Tommy Tiernan Show). It gets viewing figures comparable to The Late Late Show, yet Lynch told the committee that Tiernan won’t ever appear on RTÉ’s list of its highest-paid presenters because he’s not directly employed by the broadcaster.

He’s paid via his independent production firm, Mabinóg, instead.

Lynch explained that the costs sit within the broader production budget, not individual presenters’ salaries.

“He’s never going to appear on the [highest earners] list,” Lynch said.

Cleere asked how much the programme costs in total. Lynch said it was commercially sensitive but runs into “hundreds of thousands” of euro.

Lynch outlined what RTÉ calls three broad categories of engagement: direct RTÉ employees, external limited companies providing services, and hybrid arrangements where individuals might provide both presenting and production under separate contracts.

Cleere described the structure as “very creative” and accused RTÉ of “creative accounting”.

2. Oliver Callan gets paid twice

RTÉ Radio One presenter Oliver Callan was also discussed.

According to Lynch and Bakhurst, Callan paid €150,000 a year directly from RTÉ.

Separately, production company Catchy Title Ltd, which creates Callan’s Kicks for RTÉ, generated profits of €1.9 million last year and made payments of €52,000 to directors (Callan owns the company).

Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne questioned whether this would push Callan into the top 10 highest earners if earnings from the independent production company were considered.

Bakhurst said executives had told media minister Patrick O’Donovan on Tuesday they would consider including payments from independent production companies.

“I know that it’s not, but these are all being viewed as side deals,” Byrne said.

Bakhurst replied that no broadcaster in Europe includes such payments, but that RTÉ told the minister it would consider the issue.

When Fine Gael TD Micheál Carrigy asked directly, Bakhurst acknowledged: “He might be – he would be” in the top 10 if both payments were counted together.

Lynch said there’s a “clear indication” from the top 10 list that payments from independent production companies are not included. 

3. Evanne Ní Chuilinn says RTÉ has a ‘two-tier’ system

Fine Gael senator and former RTÉ Sport journalist Evanne Ní Chuilinn laid out her own experience: she presented for RTÉ for more than a decade, but never had a presenter contract.

“When I presented for 10 years, I asked repeatedly and I never got a presenter contract,” Ní Chuilinn told Bakhurst during the meeting.

Instead, she worked under a producer contract with a presenter allowance. Ní Chuilinn said when she worked at RTÉ, the maximum presenter allowance she could earn was €10,000. This, she says, was taxed at 50% and was not pensionable.

She pointed out the contradiction.

“You were able to reclassify Derek Mooney as producer when it suited to keep him out of the top 10, but there are hundreds of people working in RTÉ who asked to be reclassified and were told that that wasn’t an option for them,” she told Bakhurst.

She finished bluntly: “I feel like it’s you that’s getting away with a two-tier system, and that you’re not actually being punished for the transparency.”

4. Seán Rocks was wrongly categorised for 16 years

Media committee chair Alan Kelly brought up the late RTÉ Radio presenter Seán Rocks, who died last year at 64.

He had presented the show Arena for 16 years. He was put on a producer salary with an additional allowance for his on-air role.

“I have to mention Seán Rocks. I spoke to his widow, Catherine Bailey, and that, I’m sorry, that is a horrendous situation. He paid for his loyalty, he paid for his love of his work,” Kelly told Bakhurst.

The implications for Bailey and their two young children have been significant, Kelly said. He added that Rocks tried repeatedly to get himself reclassified as a presenter and was refused.

“The fact that he was actually categorised wrong for 16 years, they’re going to have to leave their house on 13 July. That is not a situation that should have ever been allowed to happen, over 16 years, and as an organisation, you have a duty of care there,” Kelly said.

He added that he had spoken to friends and former colleagues of Rocks.

“People are not happy,” Kelly said.

Bakhurst said he had discussed the issue with the board to see if anything could be done about allowances.

5. Dee Forbes instructed that Derek Mooney be classified as a producer

When Sinn Féin TD Joanna Byrne asked about Derek Mooney’s pay, Bakhurst said the decision in 2020 was made under former director general Dee Forbes and then-chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe.

“They looked at his contract, which is a radio producer contract, they looked at the balance of his work, which is he does more producing than presenting,” Bakhurst said.

“We took a different view, which is he’s well known as a presenter. He should be in the top 20.”

Adrian Lynch added that internal RTÉ records indicated there had been an instruction that Mooney be classified as a producer.

Asked to clarify the chain of instruction, Lynch said it had gone from the CFO to payments staff, but “per [Forbes] he was to be classified as a producer”.

Bakhurst stressed that, in RTÉ’s view, Mooney did not benefit financially from how he was categorised.