Kevin Bakhurst has had a rough week even by RTE’s standards. The director-general had to wave goodbye to his chief financial officer, Mari Hurley, after she served just 18 months in the role, after a storm of scandals that led to an overhaul of the RTE leadership team.
Making matters worse, he was forced to cancel a crucial meeting with RTE staff’s union representatives due to a bout of laryngitis, only to wake up on Saturday to find a motion of confidence might be tabled on his leadership.
Last week Siptu, which represents more than 600 staff, discussed a vote on the director-general at a meeting of the RTE trade union group. RTE has not yet received any formal correspondence from union representatives of any intention to hold the ballot.
It is understood Bakhurst could not attend a meeting due to be held on the same day with Siptu to discuss staff concerns about RTE’s strategy as he was ill and was forced to call off engagements. The meeting will now be held on Wednesday.
Staff are concerned about the mooted outsourcing of various services as well as the future direction of RTE.
Hurley took over as chief financial officer in August 2024 in the fallout of the Ryan Tubridy payments controversy after Richard Collins left the post. She left RTE to take up a position at Ires Reit, the private landlord.
A RTE source said Hurley’s exit had stoked “discontent” among staff about the dedication of senior officials.
Bakhurst speaking to staff during a demonstration on the RTE Donnybrook campus in Dublin in 2024
CILLIAN SHERLOCK/PA WIRE
“It is a reminder that the people at the top of the organisation, who are making the big and important decisions about the future of the organisation … don’t have any long-term commitment to the organisation,” they said. The source said there was a feeling among staff that they were left to “pick up the pieces” following high-profile departures. “The people making the big decisions are kind of hired guns. They’re in and they’re out, and they don’t have the loyalty and the commitment to public service broadcasting that the people who built their careers around this have,” they said.
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Another source said the biggest concern at RTE was about outsourcing. “Religious programming is gone. Secondly there’s Fair City and thirdly The Late Late Show. The reason this is only Siptu is that all of the jobs under threat are Siptu jobs,” the source said.
Patrick O’Donovan, media minister, said that Hurley had made progress on financial transparency at RTE. “It was on the foot of her work that we learnt, for instance, with regard to the issue of the art at RTE, the top-up payments to widows and previous other issues, financial issues that I was able to bring to the government,” he told David McCullagh on RTE Radio 1.
Patrick Kielty, the host of RTE’s The Late Late Show
ANDRES POVEDA
Tubridy, who was at the centre of the controversy that prompted the shake-up at Montrose to clean up RTE’s finances, broke his silence on the affair. He revealed that he attended therapy in the aftermath of the scandal.
“I think if I had my head screwed on better… I would have shouted louder. I accept that, and to those who are annoyed, I hope that gives some class of an answer. I do care but I can’t take the blame for the entire organisation,” he told The Irish Times.
Tubridy announced he was launching a YouTube series, called The Late Show.