Bakhurst confident €20m funding shortfall will be secured

RTÉ Director General Kevin Bakhurst has said he is confident that a €20 million shortfall in the pledged funding to the organisation will still be secured.

Mr Bakhurst said while it "was a bit of a shock" to suddenly be told of the shortfall just hours before the Budget was announced, he predicted the situation would be resolved.

He said he wished Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport Patrick O'Donovan all the best as he recovers from illness, saying this would not impede progress in securing the funding.

"The Secretary General's currently running the department in the absence of Patrick and the officials, working hard, we're giving them the information they want," he said.

Mr Bakhurst also spoke about RTÉ’s decision not to take part in the Eurovision song contest, and what it might take to rejoin.

"I said it was unconscionable to take part last year. I think it would have been very, very difficult to take part next year and that's why we took the decision early, given the ongoing conditions in Gaza and West Bank and other parts of the region and given where the Irish audience is.

"So, I don't think it's going to be easy to go back until there's a very significant change on the ground or until Israel is not in the Eurovision," Mr Bakhurst said.

He acknowledged there were complex implications to such decisions.

"I think we have to deal with those if and when they come up, I mean, people could even look back at this summer's World Cup and say, look, we televise games with Iran in them or whatever. It's highly complicated," Mr Bakhurst said.

He added: "I think for the Irish audience, Israel and Gaza is a particular moral issue that, you know, there's a very strong feeling about in particular.

"And in the end, we absolutely need to respect ... It needs to be a really important part of our decision, where the audience is on it."

Mr Bakhurst said while he expected RTÉ to remain in Donnybrook, part of the site would be sold at some point in the future.

"There is no doubt, in the coming years, we will reduce our footprint on this site and sell off some of the site. And that's on the basis we stay here, which I think we will, but we need to look at other options too," Mr Bakhurst said.

He said a reduction in the size of the Donnybrook site would affect the production of Fair City.

"There’s been a huge amount of work done on what Fair City could look like if it moves off-site and what is the viability of that and what is the cost of it.

"That is a very big decision for the future and we've done all the kind of groundwork for it, but it's a really important decision. We need to get the decision right," he said.

Mr Bakhurst was also asked about the remuneration package offered to presenter Ger Gilroy to host the new sports podcast, 'Howler’, acknowledging that he expected him to be in the organisation’s top 20 earners next year.

He added a "very thorough business case" was done around the sports podcast.

"A lot of work was put into commercially what it could offer us, and not only he's got a great reputation for what he did before, but he was a very good fit for that, but also bringing a fresh approach to sport, which look, it's always when you're bringing new people to an organisation in any position, actually it ruffles feathers, but I can ruffle feathers, but I think that's a good thing," Mr Bakhurst said.

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