Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

Really Shaft…..I prefer my fairly extensive tax eurons to be used positively for promulgation of a proper public service broadcast outlet………Now if you don’t mind your tax dollar’s spaffed agin the wall outside Goggins or blown on flip flops or numerous junkets and failed investments, that’s your issue Shaft.

All I can say is what’s your challenge?

He has actually called for Tubs to be reinstated as the host of TLLS.

Cannot take her seriously with those glasses

So I am going to bring up someone else's pay. Daithi O'Se, doesn't he have it good and sure if I where him wouldn't I be taking the pay cheque but do RTÉ really value their top Daytime presenter or do they over value him, I sided with RTÉ over valuing Daithi.

Daithi is paid 192k (2025) and 196k (2026). We will assume that this is all Daithi gets. That the contract covers his work on Seal le Daithi which is produced by Nemton for RTÉ for TG4, and that it also includes The Rose of Tralee, long with Daytime TV show Today. (not forgetting St. Paddy's Day).

But lets look BBC breakfasts hosts

Naga Munchetty - gets between 355K - 360K (she also has a 3 day radio show on BBC Radio)

Jon Kay - gets between 225K - 230K (along with various radio and podcasts work)

Sally Nugent - gets between 195K - 200K

Charlie Stayt - get between 190K - 195K

They present between 3 to 4 episodes of a 3 and a half hour show, each week. Each presenting 130 - 140 per year.

Today has about 166 each year, now based on episodes Since Jan, Daithi would be lucky to be presenting 150 per year.

Today is also a shorter show it goes out for 2 hours 10 minutes each day and on top of this, as I discovered, Friday's episode is prerecorded. So Daithi has a 4 day week. (With both co-hosts having a 2 day working week, and I am sure they are just as well paid).

Now much like the BBC Breakfast presenters Daithi doesn't live close to the studio and sure when your earning UK market rates in Ireland why wouldn't you copy the BBC presenters by living on the other side of the country.

Now if you don't think this is a waste of money in a small market like Ireland, I don't know what I can do to convince you otherwise.

Why are you mocking a history degree? That’s not very kind is it? Your beloved Toyman claims he loves history, he wouldn’t approve of your mockery.

Then again he also claims to be a political anorak and nerd - but thought Joe Biden was POTUS twice so I guess we can’t really believe anything he says, can we?

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/rte-boss-kevin-bakhurst-writes-to-staff-after-family-of-late-sean-rocks-left-very-disadvantaged-financially-by-pension-situation/a/152587602.html

Bakhurst still doesn't get it, I understand theres nothing he can do now in regard to Rocks, but he won't admit there was a problem.

Your conclusion is probably accurate . There are and were several other similar scenarios wafting around RTE.

Sean was a nice lad on air and it said he did a lot of ‘compering’ and stuff which surely attracted fees?

As DC intimated given published salaries there shouldn’t really have been major financial issues.

This Seán Rocks thing is weird.

We are apparently meant to regard it as evidence of institutional scandal that a 64-year-old man died without enough guaranteed income for his wife and family to indefinitely remain in their existing home. Days of headlines, politicians queueing up to ask questions about it, and all of it being brought into the public domain by his wife.

Yet we are very obviously not being told the full facts and instead get emotionally loaded lines like:

“She got in touch with RTÉ about Rocks’s pension and was given a number that seemed completely out of whack to Seán’s earnings.”

If I dropped dead tomorrow, my partner might also well end up saying: “his pension didn’t match his income”. But then I am 42.

Rocks died young, yes. 64 is relatively young these days. But it is also two years from the State pension age. By 64, most people’s retirement planning, including housing, life insurance, pension structure and family provision, would reasonably be expected to have moved well beyond the theoretical stage, particularly where young dependent children are involved.

And the final salary thing is neither here nor there. For most of us are now on defined contribution pensions. We know we’re on our own, except for the state pension, and know that if we want anything approaching a decent income in our old age, we need the mortgage cleared, we need to pay chunky AVCs, and we need a fair amount of luck as its all tied up in the fupping stock market. We know that one or two tweets by Trump could crash the whole thing and we end up working to 70.

None of this means that RTE should escape scrutiny if they genuinely mishandled his employment classification. If he spent years trying to regularise his position and was repeatedly ignored, then that is a legitimate grievance. But the man was 64. At some point surely he should have got his act together either way.

To me it seems that Seán Rocks was first employed as a Producer in 2000, he was then moved to presenter.

RTÉ contrived (weather legally or illegally) that they would not contribute to the pension on your acting up salary but only on your base salary.

E.g. lets say your on 50,000 and your employer pays 5% into a pension for you, they put 2,500 into that pension each year.

Your employer sometime later offers you a job acting up and says it's a 10,000 increase but this is not pensionable. So the employer continues to pay their 2500 contribution each year, saving them 500.

Now potential your contribution remains only on the 50K also, so you agree.

When you exit your pension is lower than expected due to this arrangement.

Would be the kind of stuff a late night sit down with Tubs on TLLS is made off.

I think we here on boards are possibly the most critical of the RTÉ talent. And some might say overly so.

So Jenny Z's accusation that Doireann Garrihy suffered a "witch hunt" while her male counterparts escaped the same scrutiny seems far fetch too me, I think at least here on this thread an many others we are an equal opportunities witch hunting machine (indeed some might even think we have Tubs DS).

I'd argue that nepo-baby Lottie came in for much more criticism.

But don't worry "Doireann was well able for it"…. poor Lottie.

Donncha O'Callaghan had previously praised Doireann "resilience to keep going when all the rats kept chipping away".

TBH I think these people have a huge amount of self-importance. How Donncha got roles as a presenter is a big question, he's been on Radio and TV for the last decade or more, and he was one of many regular stand-in's for Daithi O'Se when off on one of his many breaks from the Today show, Donncha couldn't string 2 sentences together.

But look can now be revealed that "Doireann didn’t even leave, she just went on holidays, and came back in a couple of months", I was sure Doirean sent in a demo-tape like all the other 700 applicants.

Jenny Z has a lot of ideas about a new version of TLLS, but not interested in the gig, but I heard little from her in relation to TLLS over the years.

Ah! The poor girls, those men hiding way in their sponsored Cars. Carl Mullen possibly just isn't as famous as Doireann, but it doesn't pass us by that he presents a 4 hour radio show and still has time to meet up with Doireann to promote the Lotto.

TBH I am never sure about Jenny Z, on the one hand I think she's followed through with the "I want to spend more time with my family" unlike many others who said similar and on the other I wonder is it that she just doesn't have anything else other than DWTS.

https://www.thesun.ie/tvandshowbiz/17001317/rte-money-row-jennifer-zamparelli-defends-doireann-garrihy/