RTÉ’s DIRECTOR GENERAL has said more land at the Donnybrook campus will be sold as part of the broadcaster’s new restructuring plan.

This morning the national broadcaster revealed 200 jobs will be cut next year as part of a plan that will seek to reduce costs by €60 million over three years.

The plans will also see the pay of its top contracted on-air presenters cut by 15%.

Speaking to Drivetime, Dee Forbes said management had looked at moving from Donnybrook, but she said the station could not afford to move.

RTÉ sold just under nine acres of land on this campus in 2017. 

Forbes said staff who are currently based at the radio centre will be moved to a different part of the campus. To facilitate this move, she said more land would have to be sold.

“We looked at building new infrastructure, but quite honestly, the sums didn’t add up,” she said.

“We can’t afford to move off the site, so we are going to migrate to the Nutley Lane end of the site and move people from the radio centre. To fund that, I suppose enhanced media centre, we will need to sell more land to facilitate that”.

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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said the government is prepared to invest more funding in the national broadcaster. However he said government funding and the licence fee could not be the only solutions to RTÉ’s problems. 

“This is about much more than the licence fee and government funding, so yes we can come to the table, yes we can contribute to the solution but there won’t be a solution without RTÉ itself modernising and reforming.”

The Taoiseach said reform of the licence fee is needed, but said any radical change won’t happen for at least five years.