It's time we all got ourselves down to RTE and demanded a presenting gig, because my God they really are on the big bucks. While the figures released today confirm that the national broadcaster's fulfilled their promise to reduce the Top Ten presenter earnings by 40% from 2008 to 2014, we still doubt any of them are hard done by.
It's even more insane to be reminded of what they were on in 2008, with Pat Kenny bringing home €950,976. Yep, almost a million.
Ryan Tubridy was the highest earner in the most recent figures released, with The Late Late Show presenter earning €495,000 in 2014.
Joe Duffy comes in second with €416,893, with Marian Finucane in at third place with €295,000.
As you'll see from the figures release though, there have indeed been salary cuts made, with RTÉ Director-General Noel Curran saying in a statement today;
“With our commitment to reducing top talent presenter fees by over 30% we acknowledged that fees were too high in the past and needed to be reduced. The audited figures released today for 2012, 2013 and 2014 see RTÉ exceed our public commitment to significantly reduce the fees paid to our on-air talent, while continuing to value the contribution they make to our public service.
"The reductions come as part of a comprehensive programme of reform which has taken place across the organisation in recent years and which has helped RTÉ deliver a break-even financial result in each of the last two years."
That's great and all, but most of those salaries have a long way to go before they could be classed as reasonable. How do they sleep at night? Oh yeah, like this...
Check out the full table of salaries here.
