RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

Was writing an essay of a post with my thoughts on this whole saga when I had a lightbulb monument. The retirement of Pat Rabitte and his cronies in RTE, the media and Dept of Communications is what is different about this pay row. 

They would have (mock)raged about it for a while and then it would’ve been back to business as usual, as it suited them all.

With all that generation gone, we got Oireachtas hearings and some actual consequences.

It was great to see the myth ‘we have to pay to retain great talent’ burst. No sign of Tubs popping up anywhere yet. 

I'm shocked. We have been told for years now that the reason that the pay for the "Talent" is so high is because other media organisations are banging down the doors to get them and yet here we have the best of the best in Tubridy and the guy isn't getting a look in so far. So someone is lying? :)

Please, did anyone think things would actually change with Bakhurst in charge?

It hasn't nor will it in the future

I'm repeating myself (I know🥴) but rte is the place to go, settle in, so whatever you can whenever and see out your time comfortably knowing that things are never going to change.

Bakhurst just looked furious at the Oireachtas the other day, he's not got a handle on it at all.

I seem him around for about year after RTÉ get a top up or if RTÉ is broken up. He'd be better of to be able to leave on RTÉ splitting so that he could say he push forward an agenda of reform.

RTE banking on the government bailing them out as they have done in the past.

Catherine Martin has to put her foot down. She doesn't seem up to it at the moment.

There is no way she’s going to change the habit of a lifetime. She will do sweet FA

Emma O'Kelly probably on a nice salary with endless benefits and perks. I don't think she filed one report for weeks in the summer. Cosy job.

Sharon Ni Bheolain was complaining she wasn't receiving enough money a few years ago. She wanted parity with Bryan Dobson to get more money.

She's not worth more than 60 grand. When it goes passed reading off the autocue, she's hopeless.

RTE also claim these are the going rates - but this is complete nonsense. They are the ones setting these rates.

2FM's funding should have been cut about 6 years ago. And I am being generous with that. 2FM was always set up to be cost neutral to the licence, even perhaps turn a profit so that it might fund some public service broadcasting on the other stations/channels/services.

With the death of Gerry Ryan 2fm was always going to sink. RTÉ never invested in other shows, they'd lost Dempsey 13 years previouslyand had struggled to replace him (only twice doing so with The Full Irish, something you have to give to TUBS, and then Breakfast Republic).

Starting in 2011 RTÉ required a plan for 2FM, in 2014 that plan need to be review and you might make the decision to fund it for 3 more years, once the second plan wasn't working, you look at a reduced service and new strategy for 2FM to keep it self-sufficient and hope that eventually you start to see growth.

But instead RTÉ decide better to keep it alive, even though those graphs show they didn't have the money for a largely loss-making commercial service, they'd argue "but we require something for a young audience", but couldn't explain how 2FM costs 10m to run while Lyric is only costing 6m and Lyric has had many cuts over the years.

Never heard any of ours talk of listening to 2FM - just doesn't exist in their music world.

I'd occasionally tune in for a soccer match on 2FM.