RTÉ told of €20m funding cut hours before Budget 2027, Oireachtas committee hears

A cut told hours before Budget 2027

RTÉ executives were told that state funding would be reduced only hours before Budget 2027 was announced, the Oireachtas Media Committee heard on Wednesday, 4 November. The broadcaster had been allocated €240 million in October's Budget, which was €20 million short of a package agreed with Government under a multi-year funding deal. Director general Kevin Bakhurst said he learned of the cut three hours before the Budget. Chairman Terence O'Rourke and other executives said they were shocked, angry and surprised by a phone call from officials at the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

The department's explanation

Department secretary-general Feargal Ó Coigligh told the committee that the cut was not the minister's proposal, though he later said it was 'not the minister's preference'. He said the department received a total allocation that fell short of what Culture Minister Patrick O'Donovan had sought, and that difficult choices had to be made across departmental functions and agencies over the Budget weekend. He said RTÉ had been facing a €31 million shortfall until an additional €21 million was found after O'Donovan petitioned Government leaders on the eve of the Budget. Ó Coigligh described the phone call to RTÉ as 'difficult'. He put the point plainly:

“It was not the minister's proposal to cut the funding of RTÉ. That's very clear from the budget discussions.”

On the day of the Budget, O'Donovan had said he was not happy with the pace of reform at RTÉ, including the voluntary exit scheme.

What RTÉ will seek next

Bakhurst confirmed that RTÉ will seek at least €780 million once its current funding arrangement ends after next year. That is the same annual figure as the guaranteed funding in a three-year agreement struck in 2024, about €260 million a year for the period 2028 to 2030, to be adjusted upwards for inflation. The committee heard that licence fee income is projected to fall by €11 million next year, and officials from the Department of Communications said the decline was likely to continue, widening the gap the exchequer would have to fill. RTÉ and the department are now working together to make the case for an extra €20 million to close the current gap, a position the RTÉ executives and chairman shared during the exchanges.

Agreed package260

October Budget allocation240

Agreed package

260 € million

October Budget allocation

240 € million

Data from the article text

The Ger Gilroy appointment

Ger Gilroy spent more than 24 years on Newstalk's Off the Ball, becoming its managing director in 2018, before joining RTÉ to host the new daily podcast Howler. Deputy director general Adrian Lynch acknowledged that the sports department 'was not happy' about the appointment because of comments Gilroy had made about RTÉ's sports coverage. Patricia Monahan, director of audio, told the committee that RTÉ ran an internal expression of interest process, assessed external candidates against the same criteria, and only then contacted Gilroy. She said:

“We assessed him against the criteria, the same criteria as everyone else, and then obviously we had to ascertain his interest.”

The accounts differ. In October, Monahan told a newspaper that Gilroy had expressed an interest, while Gilroy told The Irish Times that RTÉ's head of podcasts, Hugh Ormond, a former Newstalk colleague, had pitched him a daily sports podcast. Committee chairman Alan Kelly said the explanation was evasive: 'But it's like if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck,' he said. Senator Evanne Ní Chuillín said the first two weeks of the podcast had no female voices, which she called 'not public service broadcasting', and Monahan said she had fed this back to the podcast team in the first week. The National Union of Journalists has asked RTÉ to clarify how Gilroy and fellow former Newstalk presenter Kieran Cuddihy were recruited, and NUJ head Séamus Dooley wrote that the matter was of utmost seriousness. The committee was told Cuddihy applied through an expressions-of-interest process. Bakhurst said Gilroy would be among RTÉ's top 20 highest earners, and that there is currently no agreed rate or scale for podcast hosts.

Staffing and other business

Deputy director general Lynch said that 41% of the voluntary redundancy scheme has been carried out so far, that RTÉ's pay bill has fallen by around €7.5 million, and that the average exit cost is €126,000 per staff member. He said RTÉ is seeking a longer duration for the next scheme and expects it to be completed by 2029. Separately, RTÉ's health correspondent Fergal Bowers has retired after 22 years in the role, according to his LinkedIn profile. Presenter Shay Byrne paid tribute to him on Radio 1's Rising Time.