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LAST UPDATE | 28 May 2025
RTÉ DIRECTOR GENERAL Kevin Bakhurst has criticised the “totally inaccurate” news coverage of a video advertisement which features paid actors portraying RTÉ journalists.
Filming for the ad took place earlier this month, and the national broadcaster opted to use actors for background roles during the filming of the promotional video in order to populate the Montrose newsroom.
While some well-known faces from the broadcaster’s on-air staff have been included, actors were hired to appear as journalists in the background.
The newsroom was also given something of a glow-up with props like potted plants, which were taken away once the filming ended.
It’s understood the ad is designed to show a day in the life of the RTÉ newsroom.
Speaking at the the Oireachtas Media Committee today, Bakhurst said that the cost of the controversial ad was “less than €100,000” and came from an overall marketing budget of €2m.
Deirdre McCarthy, RTÉ’s managing director of news and current affairs, later confirmed to the committee that the total cost for the promotional ad was expected to be €77,000, plus VAT.
She said that the extras will be out of focus in the advert, so “you won’t even see these people”.
The adverts will look at the the daily working lives of three of RTÉ’s journalists, one of these being RTÉ’s Europe Editor Tony Connelly.
“An awful lot of the misinformation has come from a leak to the media from an internal editorial meeting that took place last Thursday,” McCarthy said.
“The charge is that what we are doing here doesn’t reflect the reality, and that it’s somehow some sort of fake news – that is not true.
“Everything we do every single day to uphold the reputation and integrity of our teams is applied here, and it is the same,” she added.
McCarthy confirmed that filming for this promotional video continued this week, and took place in Brussels, where footage of Tony Connelly was recorded.
Committee chair Alan Kelly said the advert has “annoyed a lot of people”, adding that he believes a lot of people would describe it as “bananas”.
Decisions around the production have proved unpopular with some in the newsroom, prompting the NUJ Dublin Broadcasting Newsroom Chapel to write to management asking for production to be paused pending talks.
Stories about the ad appeared in a number of media outlets, including RTÉ, in advance of today’s meeting of the media committee.
Asked for his thoughts on the promotional ad by Fianna Fáil TD Peter Cleere at the Oireachtas Media Committee today, Bakhurst said that a significant proportion of the press coverage over the ad had been inaccurate.
“I very much welcome being able to answer this question because it has infuriated me,” Bakhurst said.
In relation to extras being brought in, Bakhurst said journalists would have been too busy to sit in the required positions for the length of time it took to film.
He said “a couples of plants were moved from elsewhere in RTÉ” to cover up electrical points.
“There were two plants. Even when you are filming news interviews there will be people who wear make-up, they have lighting, you might have plants so that the shot looks better.”
Conversations took place between the marketing team and the news management team, the director general said.
“The initial request was, can some journalists from the newsroom sit in the background – they would be blurred out – while we are filming this for several hours and the answer was ‘no our journalists are too busy’,” he said.
In an email sent to all RTÉ staff today, management at RTÉ’s News and Current Affairs department said that they met with the marketing team tasked with creating the newsroom ad, and said that RTÉ management would work with them to “ensure they were capturing an authentic picture of the newsroom”.
Lengthy discussions were held to ensure the ad was “authentic”, newsroom management said, adding that the campaign team requested that RTÉ either provide several journalists to be available to sit in shot for four to six hours on the day or, if that wasn’t possible, that extras could be used.
“Given the daily demands on staff in the newsroom, we did not believe it would be possible to free up a significant number of journalists for this length of time to be in the background of a shot,” the email from newsroom management said.
They added that this was “not in any way an unusual approach to how we do our business”.
Later in the committee meeting, Bakhurst confirmed that former presenter Ryan Tubridy has not repaid the €150,000 at the centre of a major RTÉ scandal in 2023.
The payment was part of a 2020 agreement between Tubridy and RTÉ, under which he was to receive three instalments of €75,000 (totalling €225,000) for three public appearances linked to The Late Late Show sponsor, Renault.
Although the payments were nominally made by Renault, RTÉ effectively covered the full amount.
The existence of the arrangement remained undisclosed until it was brought to light by the RTÉ board, led by new chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh, in the summer of 2023.
Tubridy completed only one of the appearances and told the Oireachtas media committee he would repay the remaining €150,000 if he returned to RTÉ. However, negotiations later broke down, and he ultimately left the broadcaster.
When asked about the repayment, Bakhurst stated: “The answer is Ryan Tubridy has not paid that money back. We’ve asked him, on a legal basis as I’ve said previously, but I would like him to pay that back, obviously.”
He also noted that while no legal action from Tubridy is expected regarding a data request, but added that “you never know.”
Elsewhere, Bakhurst said that “no one brought the numbers” to his attention in relation to a €3.6 million write-down on a partly failed IT system.
The system had been intended to replace its finance and HR systems.
In his opening statement, which was not read out but taken as read, Bakhurst said that it was “extremely regrettable” that public money was used to write-down the IT system.
However, he added that it was “an outlier” within RTÉ’s overall capital expenditure portfolio.
“I fear it’s a case of here we go again,” committee chair Alan Kelly told the hearing.
His comments were echoed by Fine Gael TD Micheál Carrigy, who described the committee hearing as “Groundhog Day”.
Bakhurst told the meeting that RTÉ’s audit and risk committee was aware in 2023 about the issue, and that write-offs were included in RTÉ accounts, but said “not clearly enough”.
Around €750,000 of the write off were in staff costs, Bakhurst said. He added that the total €3.6m loss was written off over a period of several years.
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