Alan Kelly: Calls for full transparency on RTE pay

This is a mess, your comment in relation to transparency I get, but the salaries, the mechanisms, the transparency around all of this is actually a mess. A lot of it is legacy issues obviously, but it's time now to just deal with it. So we've got this report which says now the amount of people earning over £100,000, which Deputy Byrne has shown has increased dramatically in the last few years. So can I ask you to provide a report for the number of people who are earning over £40,000, over £60,000, over £80,000, over £100,000, over £100,000, going up in bands of 20, all the way up to yourself. Yeah, we publish that annually in the annual report. Okay, well you can supply it to us now. Second thing is. It's £10,000. The whole issue in relation to outside companies, presenters having outside companies and being paid through the outside companies or having their own outside companies or other outside companies, that doesn't create transparency. And I think that's the real issue this committee is getting at. So what we want to know is, and you can cite commercial sensitivity and I understand that. What we want to know is the totality of what presenters, if they have outside companies, what that company is being paid per year. So in other words, if the presenter is a director of an outside company, the totality, tot that on to their own salary, whether it's a contract or a staff. And then separately, if they are not the contracted, the company, they don't own the company, but they are contracted by another company, the amount they are paid on top of what they are paid by RT. So then with all of that picture, colleagues, we can get the totality of who's being paid what, because ultimately RT is paying it all anyway. RT will be either paying the company directly or will be paying another company who's paying the presenter. And by the way, it might just be presenters. It could be other people who are doing other work as well, separately. There could very well be a scenario, Mr. Backhurst, where somebody working in RT is actually being paid more than you, earning more than you, sorry. It could be, yeah. Isn't that true? They could be, yeah, in one or two cases, yeah. I suspect there is. Would you agree? So from a transparency point of view, you can see, look, I feel it's unfortunate Derek Mooney's name has been mentioned in all of this. I haven't said it out of straight. I think we all feel that. And I want to, as chair, say that directly. There's no issue here to answer whatsoever. And there's misclassification. We know all of that. But the issue here is that I have never in my career got more correspondence from people than I have in the last four days. People working in RT at every level, I haven't the bandwidth to be able to read it all. It's just impossible. And committee members here are the same. We've all got it. Retired people, people who left because they had issues and they weren't felt they were treated well, members of the public, people who have a knowledge of the media. It's been huge, the amount of correspondence. But I can tell you one thing that I know for certain is morale is on the floor. And whatever you say to me, I'm convinced of this. Because the level of it is huge. There's going to have to be some process put in place to deal with the whole issue of parity and fairness when it comes to pay and pension. People who I see as presenters are reporters. People who are producing who are presenters are vice versa. All of that is a mess. And has to be dealt with. So some scheme will have to be brought in to deal with it. I have to mention Sean Rocks. I spoke to his widow, partner, and that, I'm sorry, that is a horrendous situation. He ped for his loyalty. He ped for his love of his work. The fact that he was actually categorised wrong for 16 years. They're going to have to leave their house on the 13th of July. That is not a situation that should ever have been allowed to happen over 16 years. And as an organisation, you have a duty of care there. I'm saying that quite directly. I've spoken to people who work with him, I've spoken to his friends. And to be honest with you, a lot of people are not happy. It's almost going to be symbolic. It won't be Derek Mooney will be the symbol, but his treatment is symbolic of where this organisation needs to move to and change. Can I just say one thing to that please, Chair? I've also spoken to Catherine Bailey and we've exchanged correspondence and also with other people who are working with her. We have huge sympathy for Sean. He was a hugely loved person. And when she came to me, I said I would look at it. The issue, as I tried to explain earlier, is that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of people on RTE who have a core salary and they have allowances. I understand the issue. It doesn't make it right. You're going to have to correct it. It doesn't make it right. And I've discussed this with board as well, because I was looking to see if there was a solution. But the one thing I've said since I've started this job is that there needs to be one rule for everyone in the organisation. And we have a number of people who died in the past couple of years who would have had allowances, who accepted that they got a very sizeable. We've had people who got a very sizeable life insurance payment and a very sizeable payment from their pension. But it wasn't based on their allowance. I understand that. But you've got an issue there. You're going to have to deal with it. And I'm going to fight to make sure it's dealt with for everyone, but particularly with the symbolic situation. Sorry, let me finish. One last question. If somebody was to leave the organisation, right, at one at the top, doesn't matter who it is, I don't like getting into individual names. But would you consider saying, look, obviously you can't earn more than the DG, which I agree with, but that you would also look at doing what is the case where all these production companies are outside and they can do other events, gigs, to supplement their salary of whatever it would be, say it was the top 200,000, 250,000. Has that ever been considered in the past or would you consider doing that in the future to keep somebody? Sorry, I don't quite understand the question. So basically, if somebody was leaving, who was, in inverted commas, a talent, into the future, along with the future now, and they were being paid close to yourself because they were very high value, would you consider, in order to keep them, allowing them to be paid the salary or the contracted salary and offer them some other way, as in, we now know about various different people who have production companies or are facilitated through other production companies to get other payments. Would you consider doing that into the future or have you ever considered doing it in the past? I don't think if I understand the question, no. The question is very simple. Would you look at paying them a separate way on top of the top salary? Not if it, no, not if it, absolutely not if it's a way. And you haven't done it in the past? No, no, no. Senator Herne.