RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

Don't think the concealment element is in doubt.

Not sure how then the transaction works the from exchange to RTE. From what the CFO was stating it sounds like this is just loaded up with "credits"

It also sounded like no PO's are required for the barter exhange transaction. Due to the "fluidity" nature of the commercial department.

They don't have time for things like raising PO's

RTE Annual report 2021.

Wages and salaries 121 million (doesn't inlcude Tubs and top 10 eareners who are NOT paye on wages etc)

Number of staff per RTE 1800

Average wage epr staff member in RTE 68 thousand

200 showed up for teh protest.

i dont' think RTE staff are as angry as we're being led to believe tbh.

I feel for teh lower paid ones, but those figures are eh...high...

It's often said it's a caller driven show. Is it f&*k.

It's mostly Joe who sets rhe agenda and discussion. And quite often it's something very boring and from ancient history. And he has been known to drag a topic out for a week or three. It's laziness of the highest order.

So often you'd hear supposed 'callers' say , "yeah Joe when your researcher called me".

It's so often a borefest, but sure as long as the discussion is liked by Joe, that seems to fulfill the criteria.

It sure is, and in the article they raise the matter of "gifts", which is well know with respect to RT thanks to the efforts of a few boardsies who tracked and traced all the freebees that RT had received (often requested outright) on his radio prog. It's relatively minor but perhaps, as an appendix to the dozens of documents and financial reports that PAC has requested, the list could be included?

Do you know if anyone on over 200k turned up to the protest.

Well it has been discussed ok.

Having said that Matt seems to be off more than he's working this last few weeks.

We aren't that far off Garda involvement. There's been a number of allegations made some of which appear to be fraud, around concealment of the reason substantial funds were paid out. With regards the entertainment, again there's potential fraud at play. Who exactly benefitted, why did they benefit, and what did they provide to RTE in exchange.

There appears to be confusion in her description of the invoices, or maybe there are a number of different invoices going around.

At one point she says, "I was asked to liaise with Noel Kelly Management, NKM, to raise the invoices to the barter account". (link 1)

Then later she says, "Yes, they were raised in my office, but I did not see the invoices. I did not see the actual terminology of the invoices. They were raised in my office. " (link 2)

If you ctrl-f and search the linked transcript for "the invoice" she's inconsistent about this throughout.

Presumably the auditors will have covered this off, it's confusing to me though.

1 - https://www.kildarestreet.com/committees/?id=2023-06-28a.134#g152

2 - https://www.kildarestreet.com/committees/?id=2023-06-28a.134#g448

That sounds like she held NKM's hand so he knew what to put on the invoice to send to the barter exchange.

It probably went something like.

"Reception, can we get capanpes and bubbles sent up for the lads"

"Yeah just thrown down "Consultant services" for the 75 grand, be grand"

Even at 150k one could argue Andrea is overpaid.

If there was ever someone suited for local radio it's Andrea.

It receives public funding so it's not all that different than other public bodies in that regard. The same standard such as the acceptance of gifts and hospitality should actually apply to them more so.

Absolutely no presenter in RTE is currently worth more than 200k.

Do we know what allowances Kielty is getting on top of the 250k? Is he getting foreign travel for example.

I wouldn't argue. Using it more of an example to show how over inflated the salaries in RTE are. I would also argue that she probably isn't any worse than Duffy.

This tweet hasn’t been given the credit it deserved 😂

This is something that will have to be monitored.

The junket and waste culture that's in RTE has been known about for years, not sure why so many people are surprised about it. It's one of those organisations where many at the top party like it's the last days of Rome whilst those at the bottom scrape by. To clear something up; the AVERAGE wage in RTE is around €60,000, which means that a good majority are below this, some of them well below it, so there's no wonder that the ordinary employees are on the warpath. The floodgates have opened.

A few years back an anonymous account (@rtesecretpro) was set up on Twitter and they came out with some fairly damaging stuff, a lot of it based around RTE cancelling the childrens programming. RTE's response was to find the culprit and out them, at no time did they deny the issues the account raised. It was discussed here for a good while, but the account stopped posting at some stage and the owner disappeared.

There was another issue with the studio camera operators and the closed shop that they had. Mostly members of a few families and they were on ridiculous overtime rates for work that was based on using the old cameras from the 70's and 80's. But nobody decided to tackle this.

My own experience of them is that I used to regularly cycle past on the N11 around 15.30 each day returning from work. On a Friday the carpark was empty. Now unless there's an agreed 4.5 day working week, it just points to lackadaisical management, but this attitude usually comes from the top.

We know very little of top management in there, one of the few to be known to us is Phil Collins, her leaving party was the infamous one that flouted with COVID rules at the time, but was brushed under the carpet. Miss Collins was in the news again a few weeks ago as she has a case for €60,000 compensation for a very minor crash thrown out of court, the judge claiming she was an opportunist. She also failed to declare in court other injuries that she had settled for in the past. With an attitude like that at the top, the rot soon sets in down below.

The huge salaries paid to a small group of people have often been debated here, it's obvious the people signing this off were happy with them, even though their excuses that they brought in advertising revenue was nonsense. Liveline goes for months on end with no major sponsor. I think that it stems from the heyday of the Gerry Ryan Show, when he was bringing in multiples of his salary. But that should never be allowed to dominate the wage demands of a few.

No, the main issue in RTE is management and that's management at all levels. It's seen every day in the endless repeats we face on TV, the rampant nepotism (Lottie Ryan etc etc), and the percieved poor service. The Player is a disaster and RTE don't seem to care, they don't seem to have grasped that the media landscape is changing and that on-demand services like the Player are the future. The fact that they don't care is worrying. it seems to be a case of I'm alright Jack and bugger those who come after me.

What I'm worried about are the calls to shut down RTE. I don't like it all the time, it's presenters are biased at times, but to shut it down entirely is dangerous. We can see this from the media landscape in the US and the UK where the whole media landscape is dominated by a half dozen or so individuals. They can decide elections, rile people up against each other, start wars and more.

Be careful what you wish for. RTE needs to be changed and updated, not abolised.

It remains to be seen what happens with the report that the Minister responsible Catherine Martin has ordered. It needs to be done quickly, be all encompassing, be made public and RTE needs to be saved from itself.

Article on anonymous Twitter account:

Article on Phil Collins' rejected court claim: