Практика Shadowing: RTÉ DG says reclassification of Derek Mooney's role as a producer "justifiable" | RTÉ News - Изучайте разговорный английский с YouTube

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Now as you've been hearing,

another pay controversy has emerged for RTE.

The broadcaster has revised its top 10 highest earning presenters for 2024 to include Derek Mooney,

presenter of Mooney Goes Wild,

after it said it reconsidered what constitutes a presenter.

RTE says Derek Mooney was designated by RTE as a producer and not as a presenter from 2020 to 2024.

And then this year, it said it made the decision to consider all personnel holding dual roles

for inclusion in the top 10 presenters list.

That meant that Derek Mooney,

who earned over €200,000 last year, made the list.

Well, to talk about this and some other issues,

we're joined now by RT Director General Kevin Backhurst.

Kevin, you're very welcome.

Morning, Sarah.

Hi.

Anyone in the country, I think,

who's familiar with RT and if they were asked what Derek Mooney's job is,

they'd say he's a presenter.

So can you explain why RT decided in 2020 to classify him as a producer?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, Derek's been a member of staff for nearly three decades with RTE,

and he's actually been on a radio producer and then an executive producer contract with RTE for a couple of decades now.

And there was a view taken around 2020 that when they considered whether to put him on the top ten,

whether he should be classified as a presenter or a producer.

Now, they took the view that he should be classified as a producer, not a presenter.

You know, that view, and he's classified in our account system as a producer.

But when we came to look at it again,

and we're constantly ratcheting up our efforts to be transparent and as thorough as possible,

when we came to look at it again,

we took your view, which is although the majority of Derek's work is actually producing,

he's best known as presenter,

and therefore we've now decided that people in hybrid roles where they're producing and presenting

if they qualify for top 10 should be included as a presenter.

So are you saying

when this decision was made in 2020 it was made in

the context of a discussion as to who should be included in the top 10 list?

Yes, that's my understanding of it.

Obviously that was made some time ago by people who are not there anymore.

But we actually took independent legal advice

when the issue arose in the last few weeks about the decision that was taken in 2020.

And the legal advice was that it was a perfectly justifiable decision given that Derek's contract is as an executive producer.

But we take a different view.

We think transparency is really important and most people know Derek as a presenter

and I think we'd expect him to be classified as a presenter even though,

as I say, I think the majority of his work is as an executive producer.

Who made the decision?

A decision was made by me and the leadership team.

No, sorry, to reclassify him in 2020.

Oh, well, it would have been made by the then executive team.

And is anybody who made that decision still working in the organisation or on the leadership team?

No, no one was aware of the decision and there's only a couple of people left.

But as has been the case with a few things,

decisions that were made then were not fully discussed at the executive in some cases.

I don't know about this one,

but certainly no one was aware of the decision until we looked into it

when it arose in the last few weeks as part of the process.

So no one on the current leadership team was involved in the decision in 2020 to reclassify Derek Minney?

Okay, you're talking about his role,

the max salary for a producer in 2021 on the RT pay scale was €90,000.

So it looks to me like even if he was being paid the absolute maximum for a producer of €90,000,

the majority of his salary must have still been coming from his presenting role.

Yeah, look, it's, you know,

with someone like Derek Way,

he's had a number of roles,

and I think as you alluded to earlier on the programme,

you know, he was an afternoon presenter five days a week on Radio 1,

for a long time.

His roles changed over the years.

Now when people's roles change quite often their salaries change with them.

I mean certainly during that period where he was on the five days a week on Radio One.

You know I would say the majority of his work was as was presenting and he's on the staff.

He's on the staff contract so you know the salary is agreed at the time

and yes you know but as I say now.

Sorry Kevin I'll just be clear the question can you confirm

that when he was reclassified as a producer the majority of his salary was coming from his presenting role?

No I can't because his salary always covered both those things

and his role changed over the years and changed

when he came off the weekday slot on RT1

and it changes at the moment when he's doing a bit more TV and in the coming days.

But say he was getting paid the maximum of £90,000 for a producer

and we don't know exactly what he was on in 2021

but it would have been close to £200,000 given what it is now.

Then most of his salary,

the presenting role must have taken off most of his salary.

Yeah, but as I say,

that probably was a historic salary from

when most of his role was as a presenter

because his salary would have gone up when he was moved into doing five days a week on Radio 1,

which was a long time ago now.

Let's go back to the why of this because 2020 was the same year that a number of presenters,

including Ryan Turbidey, were asked to take a pay cut.

And we know now that the management at the time did side deals to ensure

that Ryan Turbidey's pay was actually higher than was revealed to the public.

Was this another side deal?

No, I don't think it was.

As I say, we've taken independent legal advice on the facts that we know that were available at the time.

The legal advice is that it was actually a very,

it was a perfectly rational decision to take at the time.

As I say, we take a different view because we want maximum transparency for the audience,

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for politicians, you know, who pay for RT.

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We want maximum transparency.

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We want to do what we think appears correct.

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And as you'll have seen yesterday when we published details around the top 10 for 2025,

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First of all, we've done it early because it's emerged.

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We wanted to get it out into the public domain so that people could say, sorry.

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It's very important to say that there was...

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I do want to get back to the timing of all this

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and what has been published and what might be published in the future.

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But if I can just stick on why this decision was made,

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because I think people are really trying to get their heads around that.

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You're saying it was rational and you're saying it was legal.

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I still don't really understand why all of a sudden in 2020 it's decided

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that presenter Derek Mooney should be reclassified as producer Derek Mooney.

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At the time, RT had promised the government to cut presenter pay by 15%.

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So, by reclassifying Derek Mooney as a producer in 2020,

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did that mean he didn't get a presenter pay cut?

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I don't think he got a pay cut,

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but he was on a staff salary.

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He was on an executive producer role already by that stage.

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So, you know, they had been clarified as a presenter when he was doing more presenter than Radio 1.

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All I can say is his contract,

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and I've seen his contract, is as a producer.

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And, you know, that is,

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I'm sure that is at the root of it.

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Okay, I'm just going to try and lay out,

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because it's very complicated for listeners.

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Okay, I'm just going to try and lay out the situation as may have happened, right?

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So we're entering into 2020,

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and it looks like, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong,

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but it looks like Derek Mooney is going to be in the top 10 presenters' paylist in 2020.

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Unless he's changed.

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And suddenly, a decision is made to reclassify him as producer.

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We're being told that's rational and legal,

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but we're not being told why the decision was made to reclassify him as producer.

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I suspect, Sarah.

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And as a result, sorry, I'll just keep going.

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As a result of being reclassified as producer,

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he doesn't get a 15% pay cut.

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Is that right?

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No, I don't think that is.

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I think that's a very unfair gloss to put on it.

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And people are looking for unfair ways to portray this.

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And believe me, like, you know,

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when I've seen things, I've called them out.

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I think the rationale was he fell out of the top 10 presenters in the few years up to 2020.

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As I understand it, in 2020 he would have been back in to the top 10

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and they would have had to take a decision at

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that stage whether he was working majority of the time as a presenter or as a producer.

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And clearly they looked at the balance of his work as we have done recently and the majority of it is producing.

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And you know that was as I say,

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the advice is that was a rational decision to take.

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We just have taken a very different decision because we want a higher degree of transparency for the organisation.

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Okay and just to be very clear then,

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are you saying that that decision didn't affect either way whether

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or not Derek Mooney got the 15% pay cut that would have been handed out to other presenters in the top 10.

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I can't say definitively I wasn't there at the time but I've seen no evidence to show that it did.

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Okay, in terms of the publication of all of this then,

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RT chair Terence O'Rourke said last night that this came to light

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when it was decided to do an extensive check to make

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sure the people who should be in the top 10 list were actually there.

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A lot of people scratching their heads this morning,

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I think Kevin wondering how was this not done three years ago when the first payment scandal hit,

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how do people in the organisation who are in the organisation now not say do we have this right now?

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Do we have everyone who should be in the list on the right salary out in the public?

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Well I think so.

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I mean I think the first thing to say is the last couple of years the focus has been as you'd expect,

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on making sure that those presenters who are in the top ten,

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their salaries are absolutely correctly declared.

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And, you know, because that was where the issue arose before.

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You know, as I started to say to you before,

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we've put a lot more guidelines now

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and we've released them publicly around what qualifies you to be in the top ten and what is included and what isn't.

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And as that work was being done,

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only in the last few weeks,

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someone raised the question of Derek Mooney,

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someone in finance, and we said we need to look into it properly to see,

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you know, how much is he earning,

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would he be in the top ten,

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and if so, is he correctly classified,

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because they said he's classified as a producer.

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So we looked at that.

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The answer was he would be in the top ten.

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Our view was people know him largely as a presenter,

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even though he does a lot of production work,

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and we think he should be in the top ten.

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So what prompted this search to make sure everything was right with someone in finance spotted it a couple of weeks ago.

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Yeah, well, it was a part of all the work that's been going on for the end of year accounts,

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you know, and there's a lot of rigorous work going on,

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not just around the top 10,

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but also around the accounts generally for the organisation.

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This is partly in, this is part of the process to prepare for the annual accounts,

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which are not due to be published until the summer.

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But as I say, as part of that work,

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you know, the top, we,

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you know, we, since I've come in,

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the top 10 salaries are now included in the accounts

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and therefore they have to be verified and agreed by our auditors

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and there's a very rigorous process around it and it was during that process that someone raised that question.

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Have you spoken to Derek Mooney?

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I haven't but my colleagues spoke to him yesterday

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and I think it's important to say Derek played no role in this at all.

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I mean he's you know we told him this was happening

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and he agreed that that was our decision

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but he's played no no role in this at all you know he's just just carrying on with his work really.

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Can you assure the public that this finally is the right information, all of it?

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Well as I said previously,

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it's the very best information that we have available,

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but you know we're working through a lot of information all the time

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and I think the really important thing is if we discover something like this,

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that we're very open and we say we've discovered it,

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we come out quickly.

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I mean literally this was discovered in the last three or four weeks,

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so we put it into public domain yesterday straight after the board meeting.

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Will revised salary lists for the last five years be published,

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the correct salary lists?

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Well they were correct, the previous ones.

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We've revised last year because it's a comparator to this year which is the regular way of doing things in the accounts.

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As I say for the previous years you know there was a judgment made at

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that time which was you know the judgment was justifiable correct at

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that time but we don't we don't agree with the judgment we think there should be different

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So we can't go back and rewrite it because we changed the rules.

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Yeah, I know I understand what you're saying,

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but if you've changed the judgment as to who should be in the top 10 list,

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should you not then change the top 10 list if

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that person was in the top 10 list for the last five years?

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No, as I say, I mean, we've changed it.

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We can't go back retrospective every time we change something,

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go back and rewrite history.

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You know, it is it is there.

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We change what's what's the comparator in the last in the last

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so people can look back to last year for the top 10

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and that's the way that these things are normally done

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but it's not like there was a mistake um at the time

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that we've identified as i say there was a decision we've just taken a different decision

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because we want to be more transparent i want to move on to a separate issue

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because it also emerged yesterday that orti continued to pay claire burn

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and ray darcy after they ceased to work for the organization

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claire burn stopped presenting on rt at the end of october but she was paid 47 000 euro after that

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Ray Darcy stopped presenting on October 9th.

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He was paid €50,000 after that date,

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so it was nearly €100,000 in total.

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This is what RTD Chair Terence O'Rourke had to say about all of this on Prime Time last night.

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Well, their contract said that they were contracted to present until the end of the year,

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and there were different decisions made about when they would stop presenting.

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But if we had, for example,

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if we ceased to pay them,

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I think we would have had some interesting solicitor's letters and all the rest.

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So I think it was a wise,

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right thing for the organisation.

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You paid two people for a couple of months 100,000 euro and you got nothing out of them?

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I didn't do that.

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Management did that and I'm happy to...

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But the organisation did and you were the chair of the organisation.

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Yes, I know.

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And I know the organisation that the management made the decision.

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We questioned the ceiling and challenged the decision.

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I'm happy they made the right decision.

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You're happy that the organisation paid two people 100 grand to do nothing for a couple of months?

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They weren't doing nothing.

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They were available.

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If anything had happened, they would have still been under contract to present.

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So it wasn't that they were doing nothing.

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They were available kevin are you happy

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that management made the right decision oh yeah it was totally the right decision

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and terence is totally right about um presenters although they paid

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a lot of money they also have contracts like like anyone who has employment rights in ireland

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and if they have a contract we need to respect

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that contract you know

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so you know obviously we made the decision in both cases

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um you know they were for different reasons claire was leaving

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and She stayed on after she told us she was leaving for a period.

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But we wanted to take her off there to launch the new Radio 1 schedule,

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so that was our decision.

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And in the case of Ray,

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this was effectively his notice period.

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And I think anyone would appreciate that people have notice periods.

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So if you had decided to wait to launch the new schedule until January,

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you'd have been able to get the services from both Claire and Ray, wouldn't you?

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Well, they were available to work until then,

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but we took a decision.

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We wanted to launch the new schedule.

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It was important.

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The work had been going on.

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And Claire had told us she was leaving anyway.

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So we wanted to get ahead and launch that.

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And it's launched very successfully.

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And there's been very positive feedback about it.

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But people have contractual rights if they've paid a lot of money.

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I mean, the only thing I would say overall is that,

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you know, across the Radio 1 schedule,

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you know, we are now paying less for the total of all the presenters than we were with the old schedule.

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So, you know, we are constantly trying to drive costs down.

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Yeah, a lot of people find that a bitter pill to swallow,

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won't they, looking at 100,000 euro pay to two presenters who weren't working for two months

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because it was made to launch the schedule?

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Well, I think they will if you want to dress it up in that way, Sarah.

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But I think on the other hand,

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everyone, including you, has employment rights.

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And, you know, if we decide that we're going to stop someone working for RTE,

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you can't just chop off their salary that people have notice periods

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and you have to abide by that and

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if people are paid a lot of money unfortunately it costs money

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but you know we have to abide by employment rights and

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if we hadn't by the way

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and we got into a legal fight it would cost us a shed load more money than it did.

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You said the Radio One schedule has been very well received

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there's plenty of coverage in the papers today about the listenership figures

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that were released yesterday they show almost every Radio One show has lost listeners since the new schedule was launched.

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Now I know management have said

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that they expect a fluctuation in listenership given all the changes but was this level of listenership last expected?

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You never know what to expect with Gen Lars

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because the numbers go up and down with each quarter

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so you know we've had a few very strong quarters you

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know the recent figures for Radio 1 were less strong

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but I think you know I think we're right

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that you know new schedules are not the only factor sometimes it can be the news agenda

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or or what else is going on in the world.

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And sometimes, you know, if there's a lot of miserable news,

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people choose not to listen to a lot of news on radio stations.

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So there's a lot of different factors.

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If it continues as a trend,

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say in August, if listenership figures are down again,

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will RT consider changing tack?

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We were very confident in the new schedule.

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And we think, you know,

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we certainly know the feedback is very good.

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We're extremely pleased with how the new presenter lineup is performing on air.

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So, of course, you know,

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you always review things over time.

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But, you know, for now,

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you know, you need to hold your nerve when you make these kind of changes.

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And, you know, I and the leadership team and Radio 1 team are very confident in the changes we've made.

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And as I say, the feedback from listeners,

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which is really important, has been extremely positive.

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Can I ask you finally,

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Ireland won't be taking part in the Eurovision at the final due to air,

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of course, tomorrow night.

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And I know you explained

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that decision last December you said this is on the basis of the massive civilian casualties

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that had taken place in Gaza and also the 200 journalists that were targeted and killed in Gaza.

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So if we look at where we are now,

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there do continue to be significant civilian casualties in Gaza,

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but of course it's a much smaller number than it was before the ceasefire.

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Israel has killed more journalists this year,

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but again, a much smaller number than previously.

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So does that change your calculation for Ireland's participation next year?

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We haven't started to think about it next year and there's a long way to go.

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So, you know, our rationale still holds and civilians are still dying in smaller numbers,

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but they're still dying in significant numbers,

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you know, in Gaza and also in Lebanon.

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And journalists are still being targeted and they still have been up to recently.

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And, you know, for us as a public service broadcaster who believes in the importance of protecting journalists

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and believes in human rights,

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you know, there's no reason at the moment to change our decision,

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but we'll review it in the coming months.

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Kevin Backhurst, I appreciate your time this morning.

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Thank you very much.

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