OPINION: 'Good riddance' - Joe Duffy's RTE retirement will save us all a fortune

‘It’s like a living eulogy’ - that’s how one listener described the reaction on RTE’s textline to Joe Duffy’s RTE retirement announcement on Thursday. It came as quite the shock after 37 years at the broadcaster, 27 of those spent at the helm of the ever-popular Liveline where Duffy became the nation’s agony uncle; a proverbial master of misery.

Loyal listeners almost mourned Joe’s departure from RTE which will take effect on June 27 when he will sign off from Liveline for the last time. I want to preface what I say next by saying I often enjoyed listening to Liveline; it was a window to ordinary Ireland where people could vent and air their issues, big and small. That said, good riddance to Joe Duffy’s huge wages at RTE - his salary has been a burden on the Irish taxpayer for decades.

Joe Duffy was paid €3,806,739 in the ten years from 2014 to 2023, an average of €380,000 per year, according to figures released by RTE themselves. The figures for 2024 have not yet been released. Joe Duffy was consistently in the top two or three earners at RTE in those ten years, joined mostly at the top by Ryan Tubridy and Ray D’Arcy. The average worker in Ireland earned around €440,000 in the same ten-year period. That’s hard to stomach, let’s be honest.

RTE earnings have long been a bugbear for people in this country and that feeling was certainly amplified in 2023 amid the payments scandal. The saga unearthed many financial failings at the broadcaster funded by the State, and therefore us as taxpayers. Kevin Bakhurst took the reins from Dee Forbes, who still hasn’t answered for the RTE scandal by the way, and set about making some changes. That said, people in ‘ordinary Ireland’ who Joe spoke to daily remain unconvinced to say the least. Was anyone really held accountable?

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Fast-forward to the summer of 2024 and a new headline about the failing broadcaster - RTÉ bailout: Households to stump up €725m over three years for broadcaster - pull the other one, lads. You couldn’t really make it up. Just a year after we found out RTE was paying for advertising clients to attend the Champions League final, and shelling out €5,000 on flip-flops, we were handing them even more money. In the year previous, Joe Duffy was the top earner on €351,000. The top five presenters alone pocketed €1.4m in 2023. RTE has promised reform and cutbacks, but salaries are only now being capped at €250,000. That talent pool will eat into quite a bit of that bailout.

The first ‘star’ signing of the Bakhurst era at RTE was Patrick Kielty who came right in at that ceiling - €250,000 to present 30 or so Late Late Shows every year. Public service media is very important but there are heads of State earning less than some of our ‘national treasure’ presenters. I often listen to regional or local radio instead of RTE or the big commercial broadcasters, and the talent there is often just as good. They might be getting some Government funding too, but I can guarantee you none of their presenters earn €250,000 a year.

It is an organisation’s prerogative to pay big wages, but when it comes to public money, the question has to be asked: was Joe Duffy ever value for €400,000 a year? I mean no offence to Joe Duffy and his listeners loved him, tuning in day in, day out. He said it himself in his own retirement statement; people trusted him and that is very important when people are sharing personal stories of utter hardship at times, from hospital waiting lists to serious health battles. I would still argue that the person taking those calls is not worth a wage that could pay ten Special Needs Assistants in schools, for example.

People will shout apples and oranges and say the Government funds a lot of things seemingly less important than SNAs or healthcare facilities, but we always have to ask if we’re getting value. Why shouldn’t we ask the question? Ireland has lost the run of itself before and still does regularly. Let’s not mention the housing tsar saga. Would Liveline be diminished that much if Joe’s replacement was someone from one of the local or regional radio stations earning maybe €80,000 a year - I don’t think so.