THE RTÉ BOSS Kevin Bakhurst has pushed back against claims that the broadcaster plans to “privatise” in-house productions.
He added that plans to outsource the production of the Late Late Show and Fair City would not be unlike how shows are currently produced externally.
Speaking before the Oireachtas media committee this evening, Bakhurst said that every other drama television programme on RTÉ’s channels are outsourced to an independent production company, except for Fair City.
While he said there are no definitive plans for how outsourcing the production of the soap opera would look like, the Director General of the station was adamant that whatever arrangement was made, RTÉ would still have editorial control.
Last week RTÉ published its future planning strategy which will secure the broadcaster a €20 million State bailout after months of scandal. The plan proposed 400 job cuts, a limit on presenter pay and the outsourcing of production work.
While workers’ union Siptu has said it plans to oppose the planned changes over concerns over job security, Bakhurst today said the new arrangement would not be any different to how shows are produced normally.
“I would dispute the term outsourcing or privatizing because we haven’t taken a decision on how we’re going to do them yet,” Bakhurst told the committee this evening.
Put to him by Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster that outsourcing the show would amount to privatising the production, Bakhurst declined and said that the correct term would be “commissioning”.
He added that the “vast majority” of programmes on RTÉ television are already commissioned by the station from the independent sector and that, regardless of the type of show, the station still maintains editorial control.
“With the Late Late Show, I think there’s a very good chance that whatever the solution is, we’ll end up with a senior editorial team from our team involved in that program,” he added.
Siptu last week said that it believes the structural changes at the station are being “forced on staff without consultation”. Bakhurst today denied this and told TDs that he has met with the production staff of both the Late Late Show and Fair City.
He added that he and RTÉ have had “extensive engagement” with staff in the run up to finalising the strategy.
The first of many ‘Town Hall’ meetings took place last year to receive feedback from staff about the new framework – which a draft version of was published in November.
Additionally there was a public consultation forum where audiences, other members of the public, staff and stakeholders were free to send their input to before the plan was finalised last week.
There are no definitive plans for the future of the programme, but the strategy does say it will look to relocate many of RTÉ’s in-house productions, including the Fair City set, to different locations in Dublin as well as outsourcing the production of those programmes.
Many of the moves were due to the need for the buildings to be renovated, overall infrastructure changes and plans to shrink the size of the station’s HQ in Donnybrook in Dublin 4.
“We wouldn’t come to this committee and ask for €300 million to invest in buildings that we, potentially, don’t really need – which is what we would need if we wanted to renovate all the buildings on the site.
“There is no choice about moving some of those big programmes off-site if we’re not going to spend that kind of money on the infrastructure there,” he added.
Bakhurst said that he told staff that the station plans to move the production of the programmes off-site “at some point in the next five years” but have yet to settle an arrangement with independent production companies.
There will be a voluntary redundancy scheme for 400 staff members who wish to pursue other avenues, including working directly with an independent production company commissioned for one of the programmes.
The RTÉ boss gave one guarantee to production staff, however: There will be no compulsory redundancies in the implementation of the new strategy.
“I can’t give a guarantee to the job won’t be outsourced, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about finding other opportunities within RTÉ, or allowing them, as many of them who wants to, to take the exit package,” he said.
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