Minister for Arts, Culture and Media Patrick O'Donovan has said he wants to hear more from RTÉ about a series of pension payments.
The pension payments, a disputed ownership of a piece of art in RTÉ's possession and the unclear status of a portion of land on the RTÉ site came to light as part of a recent examination of RTÉ’s 2024 accounts.
RTÉ has said that four of the payments are decades old and the others were made as part of early retirement programmes in 2017 and 2021.
In a note to staff yesterday, RTÉ Director General Kevin Bakhurst said the payments referred to were historically recorded on RTÉ's balance sheet and details were brought to the attention of the department.
Regarding the art piece, he said RTÉ is currently seeking to establish ownership of the piece, while the section of land was originally used by the Department of Post and Telegraphs.
The land is around one acre in size and is situated on the corner of the Stillorgan dual carriageway and Nutley Lane.
The report showed that in 2024, there was one severance payment including a contribution to legal fees agreed with a former member of the previous executive board with a total cost of €475,000.
Mr O'Donovan said the severance payment struck him as "very high", and he would "absolutely" be asking about it at a scheduled meeting with the Chairman of the RTÉ Board on 6 November, as well as other issues that have been highlighted, including land at RTÉ.
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Speaking to RTÉ’s News at One, Mr O'Donovan said he wanted to "acknowledge" the work of RTÉ's current Chief Financial Officer in "preparing the reports" and bringing attention to "some legacy issues".
"The CFO, the Chief Financial Officer, has been going through in deep detail some of the issues she encountered," he said.
Mr O'Donovan said the land issue "may now have an impact on the future development of the campus".
He said the acre was "given in short-term use" to Eircom a number of years ago but "now obviously the ownership of that is an issue".
"And there's obviously then as well some tax issues with regard to personnel abroad," Mr O’Donovan said.
Mr O'Donovan said that as the minister responsible for RTÉ, he wants to "be able to stand full-square" behind the current management and Executive, who he said are "doing a very good job in the backdrop of what was a cataclysmic situation in RTÉ in terms of transformation".
Mr O'Donovan also said some of the issues around the payments he wants to know more about "will be fairly straightforward" but he "needs to know and satisfy" himself that pension payments made to "survivors and widows" were done "properly".
He said he brought RTÉ's annual report before the Cabinet because "there's a lot of media reports around it, so I wanted to get it approved and published as soon as possible".
He described the latest issues as "legacy issues" that "predate" the current RTÉ management team and Board but said "nonetheless they are issues that need I think to be aired".
He said the support that has been given to RTÉ is "substantial".
"Public funding is at about €222.3m, up from €193m in 2023.
"So it's a €29m increase in public sector funding for RTÉ and at the same time we've seen the licence fee fall by €4m," Mr O’Donovan added.
Licence fee
According to RTÉ's annual report, income from the licence fee dropped €4 million last year compared to 2023.
Minister O'Donovan said it was too early to say whether there has been a recovery this year in television licence fee receipts but he hoped to have more information "before the end of the year".
He said the best awareness that can be provided to inform people of the importance of paying the TV licence is "having a public sector broadcaster that we value as part of our democracy".
"This is something that we all have an obligation to pay for...that needs to be funded, and people who own a television need to put their hand in their pocket and pay for the television licence," he added.
In relation to staff departures from RTÉ, Minister O'Donovan said he hoped the broadcaster would "live up" to its target of 100 departures by the end of the year, and its overall target of 400.
He said the Government "came good" with the amount of money it had to "pony up to keep RTÉ afloat...but that support is not endless.
"We did require stuctural reform, we did require change, we were told we were going to get it and for that change we've put forward the monies on behalf of the people.
"But that is not bottomless and it's not endless, so I would hope and I would expect that RTÉ live up to their side of the bargain in respect of the agreement that's there with the Government."
