RTE executives defend newsroom promo expected to cost 77,000 euro

Powys County Times

28-05-2025

RTE executives have defended an unfinished newsroom promo which is expected to cost 77,000 euro plus VAT, a committee has heard.
The advertisement aims to portray 'a day in the life' of three RTE journalists, including RTE Europe Editor Tony Connolly, and has been in production for months.
RTE's director of news and current affairs Deirdre McCarthy said concerns had been raised by staff but she rejected the ad was 'fake news'.
'Some issues were raised and an awful lot of the misinformation has come from a leak to the media from an internal editorial meeting that took place last Thursday,' she said.
Deputy director of RTE Adrian Lynch, who said he is responsible for the ad, said three to four people are currently in Brussels to film part of the promo.
He said the only external inputs in the production of the promo are in camera crew.
RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst said he was 'infuriated' by the reaction to the promo clip.
'A significant amount of the press coverage has been totally inaccurate about it,' he told TDs and Senators at the committee.
When asked about props used during the filming by Fianna Fail TD Peter 'Chap' Cleere, Mr Bakhurst said two plants were moved from elsewhere in RTE to cover up electrical points during filming before being put back.
'Even when you're filming news interviews, sometimes people wear make-up, they have lighting, you might move a plant so the shot looks better, and I would expect that of our highly professional promotions team.
'There's been some coverage about, you know, extras being brought in.
'The proper conversations were had about this between our marketing team, who were doing this, and the news management team about how we were going to do it.
'The initial request was, can some journalists from the newsroom sit in the background – they're going to be blurred out – can they sit in the background while we're filming this for several hours and the answer was 'No our journalists are too busy'.'
He also said RTE had 'just spent 50,000 euro doing up parts of the newsroom' and the cost of filming the promo came out of RTE's annual two million euro marketing budget.
Media committee chairman Alan Kelly said the newsroom promo 'really has annoyed a lot of people', adding it seems 'bananas' to the public that the camera crew is from outside RTE.
Mr Bakhurst said it is not 'bananas' and that getting external experts is 'the most efficient way of spending public money'.
Senior RTE figures appeared before the Oireachtas media committee on Wednesday for the first time since the new Dail was formed.
In 2023 the broadcaster was sharply criticised over a series of governance and financial scandals which further fuelled a years-long trend in declining TV licence revenue.
Among the issues RTE was criticised for was a commercial arrangement that saw the broadcaster underwrite sponsor payments that were to be paid to then Late Late Show presenter Ryan Tubridy.
This ultimately led to the organisation paying 150,000 euro to him when the sponsor chose not to renew the deal after one year.
Tubridy had previously indicated a willingness to return the two 75,000 euro payments to RTE if the personal appearance events did not materialise.
The committee heard the 150,000 euro payments to Tubridy had not been repaid to RTE.
Mr Bakhurst said: 'The answer is Ryan Tubridy has not paid that amount back. We've asked him, we have no legal basis as I have said previously, but I would like him to pay it back obviously.'
RTE executives' appearance before the committee on Wednesday came after the broadcaster confirmed it had written down 3.6 million euro on a partly failed IT system.
Mr Bakhurst told the committee while the write-down of public money was 'very unfortunate', it was 'very different from 2023'.
He said the main part of the project, an updated finance system, was delivered while the HR element was not.
'Big projects, and particularly big IT projects, can go wrong, and what I've looked back at is how the organisation tried to salvage that, and what are the lessons learned from that.'
He said one example of the changes made as a result is that every month the full list of significant capital projects now go to the leadership team.
RTE's HR director Eimear Cusack told the committee the project was properly managed.
'I was responsible for the HR element and the HR requirements. We went through a tender process,' she said.
'There were a number of vendors who participated in that process.
'The final bids, we had external evaluation of those bids to ensure that we were picking the right providers and that was the result.
'The project ran into a number of difficulties.
'I think, that there were a number of issues that arose, particularly between the contractor and the subcontractor.'
When put to her that the spec was not right, the right contractor was not chosen and it was not properly project managed, she said: 'I couldn't agree with that.
'We put in our requirements, the contractor and the subcontractor who won the tender said that they could deliver on those requirements.
'Ultimately, the finance system was delivered upon.
'The HR system, they could not deliver on, but that was not known at the time that they signed up and they said they could deliver on it.'
Chairman of the RTE board Terence O'Rourke, RTE chief financial officer Mari Hurley and director of commercial Gavin Deans also appeared before committee.
Ms Hurley said there was a 4% decline in TV licence fee revenues in 2024 compared to 2023.
'The more significant declines that have been experienced in '23 have been averted,' she said.