“We Paid Our Presenters Too Much” RTE Contract Negotiations To Severely Cut Pay This Year

Noel Curran, director general of RTÉ, appeared before an Oireachtas committee today to discuss the station's editorial and budgetary decisions. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications were informed that pay cuts in RTÉ were far from over.

Curran informed the committee that no presenter at RTÉ would be paid over 500,000 euro by the time this year's contract negotiations were completed, according to the Irish Times.

The average pay of the broadcaster's top 10 presenters was about €440,000 in 2008, but the company would like to decrease this to around €228,000 by the end of this year.

Breda O’Keeffe RTÉ acting chief financial officer said. “Negotiations were not finished. That’s a significant reduction...nobody is saying that’s not still a large figure."

Curran admitted that the presenters were being paid "too much" from the boom period.

RTÉ hopes to cut its staff costs by 42 million before the end of this year.