The wining and dining of corporate clients will now be a thing of the past for cash-strapped RTE.

The news comes as the Sunday Independent has learnt more details of executives being treated to all-expenses-paid junkets to music and sporting events by the state broadcaster.

On May 27, while €50m in bank debt, RTE organised a corporate golf day for advertising industry executives. More than 70 people were invited to the private event, which involved a round of golf at the five-star K Club. The golf was followed by a drinks reception, dinner and a prize-giving ceremony.

Guests were also offered lunch on arrival and goodie bags to take home.

Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.

Log In

New to Independent.ie? Create an account

The event was organised by RTE executives Geraldine O’Leary and Dara Meaney, the same RTE employees who travelled to Ireland’s opening Rugby World Cup game in Japan for a five-day trip with a private party of advertising executives.

On July 22, 2017, two months after RTE announced 100 job cuts due to financial difficulties, another junket was organised by the state broadcaster to a U2 concert in Croke Park as part of the Joshua Tree tour.

RTE invited guests to the event which was preceded by dinner and drinks at the Twenty2 restaurant in Drumcondra, Dublin. Up to 40 people attended, many of them RTE staff and invited clients from the advertising industry. Some family members of RTE staff are also believed to have attended the event.

A coach was used to shuttle guests to the concert after the dinner. Guests were seated in the premium level of Croke Park for the concert.

Around the same time in 2017, it also had to put almost nine acres of land at RTE up for sale to raise funds for the station.

When contacted by the Sunday Independent this weekend, Ms O’Leary, group head of RTE’s commercial department, said: “Client hospitality is a feature of the media industry – any organisation obliged to generate commercial revenue occasionally provides hospitality to build and maintain vital relationships, including RTE.

“But the industry is changing and RTE is changing too.

“Having reviewed how we support our client relationships, and given RTE’s status as a dual-funded organisation dependent on both licence fee and commercial revenue on a broadly 50-50 basis, RTE is developing a new model where we will use our own brands and events to engage our clients and agencies in the future.”

According to RTE: “The two specific events referred to, one of which was in mid-2017, were organised by RTE’s commercial team for RTE’s commercial clients and were funded by commercial income and through contra arrangements. No licence fee revenue was used by RTE to fund these events.”

Last September, RTE flew a number of senior advertising executives on an all-expenses-paid trip to watch Ireland’s opening Rugby World Cup game in Japan.

Four senior advertising executives received a personal phone call from RTE to attend the event.

The private party was flown to Tokyo and stayed at a luxury hotel before being whisked to the International Stadium in Yokohama, where they watched Ireland’s opening game against Scotland.

Timmy Dooley, a Fianna Fail TD who has been critical of RTE for corporate junkets in the past, said: “It’s clear now this corporate excess has no place in a corporation like RTE, when you consider the considerable pain staff will have to endure with job losses and pay freezes.”

Source: Read Full Article