'Miserable' staff morale in RTÉ as €450,000 exit package for former CFO revealed

‘Miserable’ staff morale in RTÉ as €450,000 exit package for former CFO revealed

STAFF MORALE IN RTÉ is “miserable” as it emerges that former Chief Financial Officer Breda O’Keeffe received a €450,000 exit package, a union representative has said.

A difficult eight months for RTÉ workers over the rolling controversies at the broadcaster has flared again in the wake of a report that revealed that RTÉ did not comply with the rules of voluntary exit packages in the case of its former CFO.

Director General Kevin Bakhurst revealed the value of the exit package during a session of the Oireachtas Media Committee yesterday, stating that O’Keeffe received €450,000.

The head of the National Union of Journalists’ branch at RTÉ, Trevor Keegan, said this morning: “I think morale is miserable around here and it was even more so yesterday when we all heard that amount.”

Speaking to RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland, Keegan said that it is “an amount that we know she [Breda O’Keeffe] had no wrongdoing in and she was exonerated by the report“.

“It’s still shocking to staff who are currently working in shoddy conditions in many of the elements of this building,” he said.

“The newsroom has had a rodent infestation. We’ve had roof bits falling on staff.

“Two of the politicians, Brendan Griffin and Niamh Smyth, alluded yesterday to the ‘bogus self-employed’ people. I am one of those bogus self-employed. I was on contracts for nine years. We’ve missed out on pensions, we’ve missed out on holiday entitlements,” Keegan outlined.

Keegan said that the €450,000 “could have gone some way towards alleviating the stress and strains of the colleagues that I’ve been representing”.

McCann Fitzgerald LLP conducted an external review into RTÉ’s voluntary exit schemes for 2017 and 2021.

More than 250 applications were made through the schemes in the years concerned.

The report found that O’Keeffe’s application was the “only one” which was not considered and approved by the RTÉ executive board.

It said the “responsibility” for the scheme did not lie with the former CFO but with RTÉ.