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LAST UPDATE | 6 Nov 2025
RTÉ’S TV DOCUMENTARY unit is to cease production next year as part of changes at the broadcaster.
It’s been blasted by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) as an example of “outsourcing” work to the commercial sector and “hollowing out” RTÉ internally.
The union has pointed to how it will likely work out significantly cheaper for RTÉ by not keeping full documentary teams on staff, but with the result being that work ends up more precarious in the sector.
The news was delivered at a meeting yesterday to staff at the in-house TV documentary unit.
Some of the recent documentaries made by the unit include this month’s two-parter on the tracker mortgage scandal and a film called The Phone Box Babies looking at siblings abandoned separately at birth.
RTÉ maintained today that this will not lessen its output and these staff will be re-assigned across RTÉ, with no job losses expected.
The broadcaster said it’s committed to ensuring that viewers will “see as many documentaries next year as this year” despite the changes.
The decision will reportedly not impact on RTÉ Investigates or the Doc on One radio teams.
It’s understood the decision had been expected internally but it has been met with disappointment following yesterday’s meeting involving RTÉ’s director of video Steve Carson and staff.
The atmosphere in the unit, which was set up in 2010, was described as “subdued” and “nervous” by some of those who spoke to The Journal.
It’s understood two people took redundancy and approximately ten other staff will be reassigned to other roles in RTÉ in the coming months.
Management held a ‘town hall’ meeting for the wider video department this afternoon, at which the news was also discussed.
The Journal understands members of management were asked during the meeting about the unit’s track record in making challenging documentaries, with the likes of last year’s Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets, Leathered and Redress all cited.
Each won awards and acclaim after their release. However, they were also described as “legally challenging” by one person who attended today’s town hall meeting.
They spoke of a concern that independent production companies would find it harder to take the risks needed to get them to air, due to the financial challenges involved.
“The phrase ‘dumbing down’ is overused, but these are really important documentaries, they have impact and audiences want them. Who’s going to make them now?,” this person asked.
Sources in the independent commercial sector told The Journal they believe the move will see a tilt towards contemporary documentaries.
It will also be seen as an opportunity for outfits in that part of the industry to potentially gain from the shifts at RTÉ.
Generally, it’s cheaper to fund independent productions or buy them from a company for broadcast on RTÉ. Some of these productions may have other co-funders, bringing the cost down further.
The RTÉ Trade Union Group (TUG) honed in on this in its statement reacting to the news, saying that by outsourcing the work for documentary making it will mean that “stable jobs” in the sector will be lost.
Instead, they’ll replaced by “more precarious” short-term employment – with RTÉ not having to pay to keep a roster of staff producers, directors, editors and researchers on staff.
Siptu have also condemned the decision, calling it “yet another example of poor judgment – arguably the most damaging to date – on the part of RTÉ management”.
“It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what public service broadcasting truly is. The financial gain of this proposal is surely far outweighed by the potential loss of documentaries of huge relevance to this country,” the union said in a statement.
It said the closure of the documentary unit “adds to a growing list of programming losses, further dilutes the concentration of skills and institutional knowledge within the organisation, and represents a serious erosion of staff morale”.
Siptu called on RTÉ to reverse the decision immediately “in the interest of preserving quality public service broadcasting”.
Assistant general secretary of the NUJ Seamus Dooley said that outsourcing of the in-house team’s work “flies in the face” of commitments RTÉ makes in its mission statement.
This includes an ambition to be “courageous” in its output.
Dooley echoed a criticism that outsourcing may mean less challenging documentaries as the work will now be done by the commercial sector.
“RTÉ exists not just to broadcast programmes Developing skills, nurturing of talent is key to RTÉ’s remit. Output is only one measurement,” Dooley said on social media.
Last year saw criticism of RTÉ boss Kevin Bakhurst’s plans to outsource the production of the Late Late Show and Fair City amid fears that it amounted to privatisation of longstanding teams in the station.
The RTÉ TUG accused management of “using the fallout” from the payments scandal to “hollow out the organisation, selling it off bit by bit”.
It added that RTÉ management was intent on pursing a “commercialisation agenda” which it the union believes will be fundamentally flawed and damaging” to the broadcaster.
“More than two years on from the major crisis at the broadcaster this shows that RTÉ has learned nothing,” the TUG said in a statement to The Journal.
This ill-conceived strategy is informed by the government, but it will be the Irish public who will pay the ultimate price with a loss of quality public service content.
An RTE TUG spokesperson further claimed that “whole swathes of the organisation” are now being “primed for outsourcing” by management.
When contacted, RTÉ told The Journal that it had spoken to the in-house documentary team about “some changes to how we will produce documentaries” for RTÉ television and the RTÉ Player next year.
“Due to voluntary exits from RTÉ and the ongoing need to meet changing audience habits, including growing demand for podcasts, we are reassigning some people to different production roles and commissioning some additional documentary content from the independent sector,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said this year will see a total 72 hours of documentary programmes broadcast, with around nine hours made by in house teams.
“Next year we are planning to offer Irish audiences around 75 hours of commissioned documentaries produced by the Irish production sector,” the RTÉ spokesperson said.
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