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THE RTÉ BOSS Kevin Bakhurst has pushed back against claims that the broadcaster plans to “privatise” in-house productions.
He added that plans to outsource the production of the Late Late Show and Fair City would not be unlike how shows are currently produced externally.
Speaking before the Oireachtas media committee this evening, Bakhurst said that every other drama television programme on RTÉ’s channels are outsourced to an independent production company, except for Fair City.
While he said there are no definitive plans for how outsourcing the production of the soap opera would look like, the Director General of the station was adamant that whatever arrangement was made, RTÉ would still have editorial control.
Last week RTÉ published its future planning strategy which will secure the broadcaster a €20 million State bailout after months of scandal. The plan proposed 400 job cuts, a limit on presenter pay and the outsourcing of production work.
While workers’ union Siptu has said it plans to oppose the planned changes over concerns over job security, Bakhurst today said the new arrangement would not be any different to how shows are produced normally.
“I would dispute the term outsourcing or privatizing because we haven’t taken a decision on how we’re going to do them yet,” Bakhurst told the committee this evening.
Put to him by Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster that outsourcing the show would amount to privatising the production, Bakhurst declined and said that the correct term would be “commissioning”.
He added that the “vast majority” of programmes on RTÉ television are already commissioned by the station from the independent sector and that, regardless of the type of show, the station still maintains editorial control.
“With the Late Late Show, I think there’s a very good chance that whatever the solution is, we’ll end up with a senior editorial team from our team involved in that program,” he added.
Siptu last week said that it believes the structural changes at the station are being “forced on staff without consultation”. Bakhurst today denied this and told TDs that he has met with the production staff of both the Late Late Show and Fair City.
He added that he and RTÉ have had “extensive engagement” with staff in the run up to finalising the strategy.
The first of many ‘Town Hall’ meetings took place last year to receive feedback from staff about the new framework – which a draft version of was published in November.
Additionally there was a public consultation forum where audiences, other members of the public, staff and stakeholders were free to send their input to before the plan was finalised last week.
There are no definitive plans for the future of the programme, but the strategy does say it will look to relocate many of RTÉ’s in-house productions, including the Fair City set, to different locations in Dublin as well as outsourcing the production of those programmes.
Many of the moves were due to the need for the buildings to be renovated, overall infrastructure changes and plans to shrink the size of the station’s HQ in Donnybrook in Dublin 4.
“We wouldn’t come to this committee and ask for €300 million to invest in buildings that we, potentially, don’t really need – which is what we would need if we wanted to renovate all the buildings on the site.
“There is no choice about moving some of those big programmes off-site if we’re not going to spend that kind of money on the infrastructure there,” he added.
Bakhurst said that he told staff that the station plans to move the production of the programmes off-site “at some point in the next five years” but have yet to settle an arrangement with independent production companies.
There will be a voluntary redundancy scheme for 400 staff members who wish to pursue other avenues, including working directly with an independent production company commissioned for one of the programmes.
The RTÉ boss gave one guarantee to production staff, however: There will be no compulsory redundancies in the implementation of the new strategy.
“I can’t give a guarantee to the job won’t be outsourced, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about finding other opportunities within RTÉ, or allowing them, as many of them who wants to, to take the exit package,” he said.
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Colonial imperialist terrorists doing what they do!
@joe moody: Protecting people from terrorists that planted bombs in Shops , Pubs , Restaurants, Hotels . They didn’t care who they killed .
@Jack Moss: Balkymurphy massacre, Derry Bloody Sunday hasn’t really covered your comrades in arms in Glory. Don’t try to come here and claim some sort of moral high ground while defending British forces in Ireland or rest of world. Your national is currently supplying the means of genocide in Palestine.
@Jack Moss: how is that protecting people? It could’ve damaged the peace process and cost people their lives
@North Phone Bowe: Your hero McGuinness and his Derry brigade murdered 51 innocent from the Derry area . 28 of them Catholics . People like Catholic teen Kathleen Feeney shot through the head by the IRA . Spares us your crocodile tears for those killed on Bloody Sunday .
@Jack Moss: shankill butchers , loyalist collusion…etc etc.. U LOL crew only see one side always and it’s orange
@Pork Hunt: Nobody defends/ justifies the murders committed by loyalist terrorists though. It’s only Provo supporters who seem to forget that the Provos murdered more Catholics than the British Army during the Troubles. Revisionism is good business these days. I don’t forget the poll carried out at the end of the Troubles that showed both Catholics and Protestants in the high 80s% say there was no justification for the terrorism committed in their name.
@honey badger: it’s not surprising to see you in support of a brutal apartheid occupying force.
Both the IRA and Hamas have done heinous things, for sure but both of them are a result of unjust suppression and disenfranchisement of people, illegally. Neither of them grew in a vacuum.
If you brutally push people down, they will rise up with whatever means they have at their disposal. I’ve no doubt that Palestinians would love to face Israel down with a conventional army but Israel has seen to it that that can’t happen. You reap what you sow.
@Soundy Sound: Lovely word salad and whataboutery. What “unjust suppression, disenfranchisement, illegally” were the Catholic victims of their supposed defenders guilty of? Strangely, Israel/ Hamas has/ had zero to do with it.
@Pork Hunt: The Shankill butchers murder 9 Protestants .
@Soundy Sound: They didn’t rising up . The majority of Catholics were supporting non violent organisations like the civil rights movement and John Humes SDLP . The IRA did not represent the Catholic population of NI . The 26 counties was a 98 percent RC state. It political system was made up of Republican parties . 40 thousand Protestant fled the 26 counties from intimidation and murder during the war of independence. The Protestant population fell to 3 percent. All this is long forgotten. Ireland was not partition in 1921 . The UK was partition . Irish Nats gain 26 counties the UK lost 26 counties. The UK people and unionists just accepted it and move on . Violence has always been the first choice for republican organisations . They always see themselves as the victims in history.
@honey badger: There is literally no point in arguing with someone who’s starting point is claiming that the nationalist population in Northern Ireland were not discriminated against by the ruling system.
@Jack Moss: protected nobody, and in this instance, actively pushed propaganda that could have caused serious damage to a fragile peace process.
Actual state-sponsored terrorism from so called “security forces”
@Alan Roddy: The security forces had a 99 percent arresting rate . Over 25000 republicans were arrested and prosecuted for terrorism and criminality . Less then 200 were killed by the security forces over 25 yrs of the troubles . 3500 people were killed almost half of those were the security forces . In 69 NI was facing an all out civil war . The only thing that stop it going over the edge was the security forces . Over a 100 thousand people died in the three yr civil war in Bosnia . 3500 died in 26 yrs in NI . If it wasn’t for the security forces and emergency services nurses , doctors , paramedics, fire fighters that all stood in the face of terrorism the IRA would have succeeded in murdering tens of thousands more .
@Soundy Sound: What you mean to say is you can’t comfortably justify why the Provos murdered more Catholics than the British Army. The only place you heard there was no discrimination was in your own head. It’s an odd thing to throw out there. Discrimination was so bad that the provos had to kill more of their own people than the British Army.
RUC might’ve changed their name, but didn’t change their anti-Irish senior personnel.
@Uí Braonáin: If I remember rightly if you got a train from Dublin to Belfast the train was often stop before crossing the border on the recommendation from the RUC north of the border . People were put onto buses for their own safety to travel the rest of the journey because the IRA was constantly blowing up the rail line . They blew it 26 times in six months . Trains carrying people from the south came within minutes of being derailed .
British spy planes hover over Gaza daily passing information to Israel on which tent full of innocent defenceless women and children to blow up next
@Kevin O Brien: Are these the same spy planes that are collecting evidence of war crimes etc?
@Kevin O Brien: Ah! Come on now Kevin!!
@Gary Kearney: Same accuracy
Any article on the cop saying no iPas are unvetted , which he clarifies as fingerprinted as identified. Kids in transition year get more vetting for work experience. No comment from the cop on forced deportation , it’s just part of the process. What a joke.
It was a common tactic of the IRA to leave secondary devices to kill the people that attempted to help the injured . The Claudy bombings consisted of three car bombs left on a public street. Car bomb two and three were timed to go off a few minutes after the first bomb detonated . There purpose was to kill the people that ran out onto the street to help the injured of the first bomb . 9 died 6 of them Catholic .
@Jack Moss: Why do you keep bringing religion into it.
@Daniel Roche: People are living in some fairytale land that the IRA were defenders of Catholics which is untrue.
@Jack Moss:
SF RA did not give a dam about the Irish. It was all about a one Island communist sithole state.
Pikes in the Thatch.
@Róisín Guffpuffin:
Pub in Rathkeel??
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