The treatment of Se\u00e1n Rocks by RT\u00c9 is a “horrendous situation”.<\/p>\n
That’s according to the Chair of the \u00d3ireachtas Media Committee, Deputy Alan Kelly.<\/p>\n
For 16 years, the national broadcaster categorised the Monaghan man wrongly in his role within the organisation.<\/p>\n
Mr Rocks, who worked as a presenter on RT\u00c9 Radio 1 and RT\u00c9 Lyric, died suddenly last July, following a brief illness.<\/p>\n
Deputy Kelly was speaking to the family of the late Monaghan man.<\/p>\n
The Labour TD said that Mr. Rocks was categorised wrongly for 16 years.<\/p>\n
According to the Committee Chair, the family is “going to have to leave their house”.<\/p>\n
Deputy Kelly made these comments while speaking to Director General of RT\u00c9 Kevin Bakhurst this week.<\/p>\n
He said: “I have to mention Se\u00e1n Rocks, I spoke to his widow. That, I’m sorry, is a horrendous situation. He paid for his loyalty, he paid for the love of his work.<\/p>\n
“They’re going to have to leave their house on the 13th of July. That is not a situation that should ever have been allowed happen.<\/p>\n
“As an organisation, you have a duty of care. To be honest, a lot of people are not happy,” Deputy Kelly added.<\/p>\n
In his response, Mr. Bakhurst said he also spoke to Mr. Rocks’ family.<\/p>\n
He said he has huge sympathy for S\u00e9an, and his family.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bakhurst said: “I’ve also spoken to (Se\u00e1n’s widow), we’ve exchanged correspondence. We’ve huge sympathy for Se\u00e1n, he was a hugely loved person. The issue is that there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of people in RT\u00c9 who have a core salary, and they have allowances-“<\/p>\n
Deputy Kelly interjected: “I understand the issue, that doesn’t make it right.”<\/p>\n
“No, it doesn’t make it right. I’ve discussed this with the board as well. There needs to be one rule for everyone in the organisation. We have had a number of people who died who had allowances who accepted that they got a very sizeable life assurance payment, and a very sizeable payment from their pension, but it wasn’t based on their allowances,” Mr. Bakhurst said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The treatment of Se\u00e1n Rocks by RT\u00c9 is a “horrendous situation”. That’s according to the Chair of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278,6085],"class_list":["post-463101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463101","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=463101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}