‘We’re so stretched,’ says RTÉ journalist Emma O’Kelly as she raises fears over election coverage

Education correspondent Emma O’Kelly said she had canvassed her co-workers around the issue of staffing shortfalls before her appearance at an Oireachtas committee yesterday.

When questioned by Labour Senator Marie Sherlock about resourcing and up to 400 proposed voluntary redundancies, she said: “We’re so stretched at the moment.

“And a number of people expressed fear about our coverage of all the elections that are coming up because we’re already absolutely stretched,” added Ms O’Kelly, who is chair of the NUJ Dublin broadcasting branch.

Today's News in 90 Seconds - April 25th

“We’re facing into elections like no other elections We’re going to have massive challenges. We’re in a whole new environment in terms of disinformation. We’re going to have to have the resources to have experienced journalists fact-checking and there’s real concern among colleagues in the newsroom as to how we’re going to fulfil our public service remit – that is to deliver balanced and fair and informative coverage in this completely new ­environment – and there’s a concern that we don’t have the resources or we need the resources to do that properly.”

Ms O’Kelly said staff in the newsroom struggle to do their jobs and cannot get basic equipment. She said it is like a “lottery” to figure out which printer is working, while crews are driving old cars with no sat-nav, and the building they work in is “falling apart”.

She said the model and level of funding for the national broadcaster need to be examined, adding “we would all love” for former director general Dee Forbes to come before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media or the Public Accounts Committee to answer questions.

She said she agrees that there is a “missing link” in relation to this.

When asked what employee relations with director general Kevin Bakhurst are like, she said communication has certainly improved, but “action speaks louder than words”.

“We want to see, we need to see change and action,” she said.

“And as I said already, sometimes it’s such a struggle to do our jobs because of the lack of resourcing, because of the broken-down facilities that we’re working with. So that is what our focus is on. It’s great to feel you have a listening ear but if you’re not seeing results, if change isn’t coming, then that’s not good enough.”

She said last summer, when revelations about RTÉ broke, was like a “dam bursting” as staff were fighting internally on a number of fronts and did not feel they were being listened to.

They hoped it would be a catalyst for change, she said, but almost a year on they still feel they are “flailing and getting nowhere” due to funding issues.

Seamus Dooley, of the NUJ, said there is an “inertia” in RTÉ. He said the union does not lay all of the blame with the former director general or hope for the future on the current director general.

“The future of this organisation cannot be dependent on one person,” he said.

The NUJ has warned Media Minister Catherine Martin that delays reforming funding for public-service broadcasting will have “grave consequences” for RTÉ workers and quality programming.

Ms O’Kelly said staff are concerned that the organisation is being, in effect, held to ransom. She said there seems to be a deal that in return for some movement on funding, RTÉ must cut its workforce by a fifth and outsource a large portion of in-house work.

She said she did not want to sound too negative but had questioned last summer whether she would recommend that anyone join RTÉ.

“Up to that point I would always have said go for it,” she said.

Independent TD Mattie McGrath asked the trade union group why they were not looking for the fraud squad to be brought in over the issue of bogus self-employment at RTÉ.

He accused the unions of making “cosy deals” and having an attitude of “to hell with the small people”.

The TD claimed there had been ­illegality on a large scale that was “disgusting”. ​

Mr Dooley said if he did not know about the unions’ actions, he had not been following events. He said unions had raised the issue on a number of occasions, and pointed out that the Scope section of the Department of Social Protection did not have sufficient resources to go into media organisations and building sites to investigate workers’ employment status.

Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster said she could not get her head around the fact that RTÉ was “allowed” to misclassify up to 700 workers over decades and unions appear to have done “little or nothing”.

Brendan Byrne, of Unite, said there was “union bashing” going on and accused politicians of “grandstanding”.