{"id":458496,"date":"2026-05-20T14:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458496\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:30:17","slug":"oliver-callan-receives-second-payment-for-callans-kicks-rte-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458496\/","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Callan receives second payment for Callans’ Kicks, RT\u00c9 reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 director general Kevin Bakhurst has accepted there could be \u201cone or two cases\u201d where people in the organisation are earning more than him.<\/p>\n

He was responding to a question by Media Committee chairman and Labour TD Alan Kelly.<\/p>\n

Kelly said: \u201cThere could very well be a scenario, Mr Bakhurst, where somebody working in RT\u00c9 is actually earning more than you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The director-general agreed, adding: \u201cThere could be in one or two cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bakhurst has previously said no-one at RT\u00c9 should earn more than he does.<\/p>\n

He has a basic salary of \u20ac250,000 and is entitled to a car allowance of \u20ac25,000 and a pension contribution of \u20ac62,500.<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 said last week that Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty earned \u20ac266,323 in 2025 and \u20ac257,657 in 2024.<\/p>\n

Fine Gael senator and former RT\u00c9 sports broadcaster Evanne N\u00ed Chuilinn criticised a \u201ctwo-tier system\u201d in her previous employer.<\/p>\n

Questioning Bakhurst at the Media Committee, N\u00ed Chuilinn said there are people presenting high-profile programmes without presenter contracts.<\/p>\n

She said they had been asked to be reclassified, in a way similar to how Derek Mooney had his role reclassified, but were told they couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

N\u00ed Chuilinn said she asked repeatedly for a presenter contract but never received one. \u201cI was never paid or contracted as a presenter, and I should have been, because, as you say, presenters earn more than reporters.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example, she said there was someone on \u20ac70,000 presenting World Cup programmes and researchers presenting the Today Show.<\/p>\n

Bakhurst said he did not believe they were on researcher contracts and said there had always been a range of salaries for presenters depending on experience, how they connect with the audience, and how valued they are.<\/p>\n

N\u00ed Chuilinn said: \u201cI was good money, I was worth the money that you paid, you got good value out of me.<\/p>\n

She also told the committee she was \u201ctreated very poorly\u201d by the head of sports and another senior figure.<\/p>\n

Some of the commentary around RT\u00c9 recharacterising Derek Mooney as a presenter was \u201cunfair\u201d, Bakhurst also said.<\/p>\n

He told the Media Committee: \u201cWe were trying to do the right thing to be more transparent by putting this out and there was comments around it, which I thought were unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cAnd there was a price for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9’s director general Kevin Bakhurst has told the Media Committee that there are some presenters who work for independent companies providing content to RT\u00c9 separately to the direct work they do for the broadcaster.<\/p>\n

He said it was not industry practice anywhere in Europe to include those earnings in overall salary figures, but said they could \u201clook at it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Radio presenter Oliver Callan was cited as an example, who also produces the satire show Callan\u2019s Kicks.<\/p>\n

Senator Ronan Mullen told the director general: \u201cI am astounded to learn today what I think you\u2019ve said, which is that it remains the case that through a combination of a personal salary and a payment to a company, a person might avoid being mentioned in the top 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I actually thought we had moved beyond all that, and listening then to talk of it still being possible, if I understand you correctly, that a person could be put on a personal contract that they bring you to exceed the cap \u2013 it sounds to me like we\u2019re still down an Animal Farm and that some animals are still more equal than others, and the public is still in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 staff members have been put on \u201cpersonal contracts\u201d that exceed the salary cap for their role, the organisation’s chief also said.<\/p>\n

Bakhurst told the committee that this would have happened in the past in circumstances where someone had been offered a job somewhere else and wanted to \u201ckeep them\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, he said RT\u00c9 does not \u201cdo it anymore really\u201d.<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 is not releasing information in a \u201cdrip-drip\u201d fashion, the broadcaster\u2019s director general also said.<\/p>\n

Responding to Fine Gael TD Brian Brennan, who questioned Bakhurst on whether he was the right person to lead the organisation and stop a \u201cdrip-drip\u201d of information, the director-general said: \u201cIt\u2019s not a drip-drip \u2013 when we discover things, we will put them in the public domain.”<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in TD Joanna Byrne told Bakhurst that there was a perception that RT\u00c9 was playing \u201cfast and loose\u201d with the public purse.<\/p>\n

It was later revealed that RT\u00c9’s then-director-general and then-chief financial officer took a decision in 2020 that Derek Mooney was doing more producing than presenting.<\/p>\n

Byrne asked Bakhurst who made the decision that saw Mooney excluded from the annual list of the top-10 highest-earning presenters between 2020 and 2024.<\/p>\n

The director-general said \u201cfrom what we\u2019ve seen, the decision was taken by the CFO and the director general\u201d that the balance of is work was he did more producing than presenting.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThough we took a different view, which is he\u2019s well known as presenter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deputy director-general Adrian Lynch added a \u201cclarification\u201d: \u201cIt was an instruction that was given to a person in payments that \u2013 per DG \u2013 he was to be classified as a producer.\u201d<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 are appearing before the Media Committee from 12.30pm.<\/p>\n

It comes after recent pay revelations uncovering that Derek Mooney was not included in the top-10 highest-paid presenters list, even though he was paid enough to feature every year between 2020 and 2025.<\/p>\n

Mooney, however, was reclassified as a producer in his contract, and the broadcaster said he had not been considered for inclusion in the list since then.<\/p>\n

The 2025 figures also revealed that RT\u00c9 continued to pay Ray D’Arcy and Claire Byrne after they left the broadcaster in October 2025.<\/p>\n

For the remainder of the year, D’Arcy received \u20ac50,000, and Byrne received \u20ac47,000.<\/p>\n

Late Late Show presenter Patrick Kielty, who recently came to the end of his contract, was also paid an additional \u20ac23,980 across 2024 and 2025 as he presented additional programmes beyond his standard contract.<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 bosses met with Communications Minister Patrick O’Donovan on Tuesday evening amid the fresh scrutiny of its financial management.<\/p>\n

Station director-general Kevin Bakhurst, deputy director-general Adrian Lynch, and board chairman Terence O\u2019Rourke attended the meeting with O\u2019Donovan and his officials in Dublin.<\/p>\n

Bakhurst and Lynch are the RT\u00c9 reps to attend the meeting on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"What<\/p>\n

Ireland<\/p>\n

What is going on with the latest RT\u00c9 payments scandal?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Consultant\u00a0Sam Whipple, who worked as a \u201cchange co-ordinator\u201d at the BBC, has been tasked with examining how RT\u00c9 is structured and resourced and to identify areas to \u201cimprove workflows\u201d and \u201cdelivery\u201d across TV, radio, online and social media.<\/p>\n

His review started at the end of April and is expected to last 40 days. It was not required to be publicly tendered and is therefore understood to cost less than \u20ac50,000.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, however, Bakhurst\u00a0refused to provide a specific figure on what Whipple was being paid and declined to put a figure on how much in savings he was expected to identify.<\/p>\n

The Committee session, which begins at 12.30pm, is expected to last two hours, with station bosses likely to be grilled on much of the above and whether they learned their lessons from previous governance failures and transparency issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 RT\u00c9 director general Kevin Bakhurst has accepted there could be \u201cone or two cases\u201d where people in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-458496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}