Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that the recent payment revelation at RTÉ is "difficult to comprehend".
This comes after it was revealed that RTÉ presenter, Derek Mooney was named as its ninth highest paid presenter since 2020, but did not feature in annual lists as he was classified as a producer, which has led to bosses at the national broadcaster calling for a meeting with the Minister for Communications.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, the Taoiseach said: "I welcome the transparency that was in evidence in terms of the clarification that RTÉ brought forward this morning".
"I understand the minister (Patrick O'Donovan) will be meeting with the chair and director general of RTÉ and we again welcome that transparency", he continued: "It's important to retain confidence in the public. Difficult to comprehend what transpired, but nonetheless the correct decision was taken to correct that".
When asked if the Director General Kevin Bakhurst's pay rise of €20,000 should go ahead as planned, Mr Martin insisted that the Government "didn't want to be micromanaging RTÉ".
"We don't want to be micromanaging RTÉ or commercial semi-states", he said. "A formal decision has to come to Government but there is a market place out there and one has to be senisble on how to go about things".
Following the revelations regarding Mooney's salary, Minister for Arts, Culture and Media, Patrick O'Donovan has called for an audit of payments to presenters at RTÉ.
This scandal has similarities with the one which saw the broadcaster embroiled into a huge crisis almost three years earlier, after it emerged that they had underdeclared payments to former Late Late Show presenter, Ryan Tubridy.
This led to a series of showdowns with Oireachtas Committees, and controversies regarding financial mismanagement at the station, which was seen as leading to a fall in TV licence receipts. It also resulted in the Government changing how they funded the organisation.
"The Derek Mooney issue here I think is a side issue. I think the greater issue here is payments in their entirety across the organisation in the period from 2020 onwards", Mr O'Donovan said.
He added that payments for this period "should have been subject to audit" and that he does not know how it wasn’t uncovered earlier.
"It coincides in a period of time when the company is being bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of almost three-quarters of a billion euro", he said. "We thought we had seen the last of this, but obviously now we have further questions"
"I have convened a meeting in the department on Tuesday between myself, officials and representatives of RTÉ to include the chair and Director General".
Mr O'Donovan also questioned how Mr Mooney could have been viewed as "anything other than a presenter".
"He was a presenter, he is a presenter, he's always a presenter", he added. "It’s like a duck. If it walks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
"But for some reason unbeknownst to the current chairman, he was recategorised".
Mr O'Donovan went on to add that he is keen to find out if there are other people in employed by RTÉ receiving payments that were not previously known.
