For years, RTE has guarded information about the salaries paid to its top presenters in the manner in which the Vatican once guarded the Third Secret of Fatima. However, that is about to change, it emerged yesterday.
Surprising TDs and senators during a Leinster House meeting, the station's director-general, Mr Bob Collins, said that future contracts of top presenters should not be covered by a veil of secrecy. "I do not believe that confidentiality clauses should be in future contracts. I believe in accountability," Mr Collins told the Joint Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language.
Minutes earlier, hardly expecting such a change in tack, Fine Gael Carlow/Kilkenny TD Mr John Browne had trotted over a well-worn path. "Your credibility is very much in question when you will not reveal the salaries," he had fulminated.
Surprising politicians is one thing. The surprise which may be felt by the presenters, who would include Pat Kenny, Marian Finucane and Gerry Ryan, is quite another, since it appeared they had not been told of the change. Following the Oireachtas meeting, Mr Collins said that the contracts of the chosen few would come up for renewal "over the next 24 months or so".
"There aren't enough people on the list to fill the fingers of one hand," he declared. Up to now, RTE has blocked off at the pass demands for such information. Mr Collins defended such action on grounds that other stations had been "on the prowl" for Donnybrook's talent.
However, Fine Gael's Mr John Browne was having none of that. "We have to take your word for it that you are spending the money wisely. I don't think that my own local station, CKR, could compete with you. There are few that could."
Despite the change, he also defended the old secrecy laws. "There were issues of commercial sensitivity involved in all of this. And there still are."
