If there's one thing that gets people talking every year, it's how much RTE pays its top presenters, and now Director General Noel Curran has admitted that their salaries were a wee bit ridiculous.
"During the boom, the remuneration of RTE's top presenters became overly inflated," the Irish Indepdendent reports the DG told a sitting of the Dail's Communications Committee. "Put simply, we paid our top presenters too much."
No shit Sherlock: We may have worked that out already, what with Late Late Show host Ryan 'sure aren't we living in terrible times' Tubridy being paid €723,000 in 2011 before a 32 per cent pay cut saw his fee fall to €495,000 last year. Meanwhile Pat Kenny was earning €630,000 in 2010 and 2011, but his contract is up for renewal this year, so we can imagine there will be talk of another wee trim there too...
RTE is expected to pay about €3.3 million to its seven highest paid contract workers (which generally includes the likes of Miriam O'Callaghan, Joe Duffy and Marian Finucane) this year. That sounds like quite a lot, given that the organisation is apparently struggling to balance the books, but Curran said it will mark a €42 million plus reduction in staff costs at the station since 2008. And sure didn't he say the national broadcast was far from perfect, but important because it gave us lovely Irish programmes and Love/Hate?
If that doesn't give you a good laugh of a Wednesday, I don't know what will. Sure maybe you can give the station a buzz and talk to Joe about it...
