RTÉ - Radio Telifís Eireann

If you wondered why RTÉ are so anxious to peddle the establishment line on Covid listening to the ads breaks on Morning Ireland might give a clue. There were four ads between 830 and 9 presumably peak morning listening time or just off peak. One was for the Property Services Regulatory Authority one was for the Charities Regulator, One was a HSE ad about Covid and one was for the National Lottery (a State concession). For all the talk about increased listenership , commercial advertising has collapsed and RTÉ seems to be even more dependant on the State for Revenue.

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Surprised there wasnt one for laya healthcare…

25m quid for a ticket to DWTS

time to wind it down. surprised the shinners havent advocated for shutting RTE and handing the PSO over to TG4 and RnaG

Whatever about winding it down the salaries are not sustainable

some fairly simple solutions:

  1. no salaries above 200k
  2. all PRSI employees, so if you have a production company there will be no new contract offer
  3. you dont like it there’s a door
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But Joe Duffy will be off presenting a show on the BBC before the end of the week if they do that

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Yeah that seems practical. I think I read somewhere before that they have 120 employees earning over 100,000 a year. Actually here is the article below. That seems like an awful lot and seems to indicate that they have a lot of middle management. I’m not sure a google or facebook in Dublin who are amongst the best paid employees in the private sector would have that % of employees earning in excess of 100k a year. Its absurd. They may point to the fact that their peers are getting something similar in the UK with BBC etc but they have a much bigger market and reach than ours. Even BBC this week they are talking about taking away the licence and making it subscription based. I think RTE should be viable as a commercial entity and at the moment it simply isn’t.

Is my understanding correct, art?

RTÉ “talent” set up companies and are not directly employed by RTÉ so they can instead charge RTÉ a fee and only be charged corporation tax rather than the higher rate personal taxes…

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yep, not sure how many of them do it but its certainly happening

:smiley:

That poses the age old problem of how to get the money out of the company without incurring double tax?

100% correct. Revenue really need to clamp down on this and it is something they have really zoned in on in the pharma industry where you have a lot of contractors. You need to prove that you dont meet the test for a PAYE employee and are working in other companies too. RTE staff should have same burden of proof.

Be some crack if someone had the actual nuts to go in and tear RTÉ asunder.

The BBC and the other UK channels will have some talent pool to source .

Claire Byrne freezing bread on Newsnight and it will be Emily who ??

Pension, hire family members, leave profit in company and on disposal claim any amount of retirement reliefs. There are numerous viable cash extraction methods.

Yep, in a state or semi-state company that’s posting losses year on year they should simply change policy and not use contractors like this. Put in the salary cap, as you say. These contractors setting up as sole traders is more like what you see in industry - actuaries, solicitors and the like getting paid massive daily, weekly, monthly rates partly to compensate for the loss of permanent employee perks like pension etc. But some gimp like Joe Duffy doing it to take home hundreds of k is ridiculous.

I know just the man

hqdefault

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Post losses.

Expense items.

Hire the offspring as staff.

Plenty of loopholes around getting lower tax rates than they’d be paying as employees, a capitalist pig like Joe Duffy wouldn’t be doing it unless he could cheat the tax payer.

It might just be crazy enough to work.

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Its really the accountants to blame when you think about it.