Eamon Dunphy has blasted RTE describing its top earners as being on “ridiculous money”.
The outspoken former pundit and podcaster said the payments scandal and cost-cutting proposal to shed 400 jobs came as “no surprise”.
Dunphy, 78, told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “RTE has been badly run for years... money wasted and people paid too much.
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“If you look at it as a pyramid, at the top of the pyramid is Joe Duffy and Claire Byrne.
“An awful lot of people were on ridiculous money. I mean, that was always going to lead RTE into trouble. There’s an awful lot of people working very hard [who] don’t get paid as well as they should, many of them.”
This week, RTE’s director general Kevin Bakhurst said presenters’ pay would be capped at €250,000 annually.
Though it’s believed Duffy renegotiated his contract weeks before the pay scandal erupted and will keep his €351,000 salary until mid-2025.
Dunphy, who earned more than €300,000 for his RTE gig in 2008 at the height of his punditry career, said: “I think RTE is in trouble.
“They are entitled, sticking the hand out for €200million every year, and then producing an awful lot of stuff that has gone downhill like sport.
“The most recent example, would be the Rugby World Cup. Virgin was much better than RTE were, soccer is gone.
“You can tell from the drop off of people paying the licence fee, the public were angry because it’s their money that runs the show.
“They were angry at the waste, they were angry at the arrogance. I don’t think there’s a lot of goodwill for RTE in the country.
“RTE got €56million [from the Government] this week. The rest of us in the media are not getting free money to bail us out.”
The national broadcaster is expected to face a TV licence fee shortfall of more than €61m during the next two years with 100,000 households so far refusing to pay.
Dunphy added: “The problem is this, RTE don’t regard themselves as being like the rest of us.
“They feel entitled to get free money from the taxpayer to behave as they want, overpaying people.”
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