Joanna Byrne: Demands answers over RTE salary misclassification
Joanna Byrne challenges RTE executives over the classification of Mr Mooney and presses for clarity about who authorised the decision and whether transparency failures have damaged public trust.
In a session focused on governance and oversight, Byrne asks whether the classification was a miscategorisation or a deliberate attempt to obscure pay and questions the role of the CFO and the Director General.
Classification dispute
Joanna Byrne highlights concerns about how Mr Mooney was categorised - producer versus presenter - and whether that classification hid the true nature of his role. She asks who instructed payments and whether any agent negotiated additional terms.
Decision-makers named
Byrne repeatedly seeks to establish whether the CFO and the Director General made the original decision and whether the instruction to classify Mr Mooney as a producer was routed through payments staff. RTE representatives say legal advice informed a later reclassification to presenter for transparency.
Transparency and trust
Byrne stresses that delayed disclosure and the handling of the case have harmed public confidence. She questions whether the organisation's recent transparency measures are sufficient to restore trust ahead of decisions on multi-annual funding.
Funding implications
The exchange centres on whether committee members can recommend future funding while questions remain. Byrne frames the issue as one of governance, accountability and the public purse, urging clear answers from RTE leadership.
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I suppose it has to be said for the Irish public watching on, this is like Groundhog Day. It's not three years since the last financial scandal that rocked RTE and here we are again, embroiled in more controversy. It absolutely beggars belief. The question has to be asked around the classification of Mr Mooney's role. Was that a misclassification or a miscategorisation in the first place or was it a deliberate attempt at hiding the culture in the top brass executives in RTE thinking that the rules don't apply and commitments given to the members here and to the Irish public around improved governance and oversight don't apply and you're continuing to play hard and fast or fast and loose with the public purse and not reporting accurately on the big salaries of your high flyers and I think you have to accept here today that that is the perception that's out there amongst the Irish public. I have a couple of questions that I'd like brief answers on. Mr Backhurst, you referenced in media yesterday that they took the view that he should be classified as a producer and not a presenter. I want to know who they are who made that decision and crucially was this agreement in regards to being categorised as one role and then having a sweetheart top-up deal on top of that. Was that negotiated by an agent and if so can you name who the agent was? Okay I'll try and deal with all those points. And if you can be brief. I'll try and be brief. I think in 2020 he would have been back into the top 20 and from what we've seen the decision was taken by the CFO and the Director General that when they looked at it should he be in the top 20, is he a presenter or a producer they looked at his contract which is a radio producer contract they looked at his balance of his work which he does more producing the presenting though we took a different view which is he's well known as a presenter he should be in the top 20. So just to be clear and so the record is clear that initially this was a decision of the CFO and the Director General to categorise Mr Mooney as a producer. Actually just because I looked into this make one clarification there so it was a instruction that was given to a person in payments that per DG he was to be classified as a producer. But who gave the instruction? So it would have come it was CFO to people's payment but it was per DG so that's the important piece. Okay just to just to say so it's really important I think for Mr Mooney to make this clear he didn't benefit at all financially from how he was. No my issue isn't in regards to Mr Mooney. You mentioned sort of top up payments he didn't get any top up payments right he had one salary and that was it. Okay what what I'm trying to get to here is it's not directed at Mr Mooney it's directed at the governance of RTE under your stewardship particularly in the last couple of years is it working is it working as effectively as it could be and should be and was there a role in relation to this in for the agent? He didn't have an agent because he's on staff now. Okay and does he have an agent now? No he's on staff as far as I'm aware we never dealt with an agent I don't think he has one but we never dealt with. Look all I can say is when we came across this you know and I know people have all been saying it's historic it was decided in 2020 when we came across his classification we took legal advice and it was up to us how we classified it and we decided to classify him as a presenter in this because we want to be more transparent and we feel he should be in the top 10 because he does a significant enough amount of presenting as part of his overall package so this is absolutely about driving transparency and you know we could given the legal advice we could have taken either decision. It's great it's great to virtue signal this. I'm sorry it's not a virtue signal I'm trying to be honest about what happened here. It is around transparency we're being transparent you're obviously not being transparent because it took a number of years for this to be disclosed first of all and it took three weeks to disclose when we found it. I mean that was his status for a number of years it only was uncovered when we were preparing the top 10 because we ratcheted up what we look at when we're doing the top 10 this year. Are you 100% confident that there's nobody else with the same misclassification? Yes. At this moment? Yeah in fact I ran through the list of the top 30 earners in RT which goes down well below the top 10 yesterday with the minister and none of them have got a dual role as a presenter. Okay and just finally my last question because I'm out of time on this round. In relation to public confidence and public trust and you've referenced that in your opening statement we've learned the hard way in regards to public trust and the gains we have made in terms of the recovery of that trust are not something we take for granted. I feel you've done huge damage to that public trust in the way this has been handled and obviously in the controversy that's been around us in recent days but from a committee's perspective the multi-annual funding is up next year. How would we have confidence in committee members here to recommend to the minister that that funding be continued any longer? First of all you can see how we're managing the organisation, how we're managing the finances, what we're delivering for audiences, the changes we're making and the transparency we are driving and you know that's why I said yesterday I was disappointed because this was our decision to make a decision on this and to make it rapidly and to make it transparent rapidly and I'd just like to say in the past the top 10 salaries were published two to three years after the period that they were addressing. We have put, they're now put by us since we since I started and by the leadership team they're now in the annual report they are audited and they're published in real time and in fact this one has been published ahead of the annual report so there's an extreme change in transparency.
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