Jennifer O'Connell: Gay Byrne was the first big beast broadcaster. Claire Byrne was the last

To whom it concerns, this is The Late Late Show and here are your hosts ... the director general, the chief technology officer, the head of risk and compliance. It really doesn’t have the same ring. But as this week’s publication of the highest earning members of staff at RTÉ proved yet again, the era of big beast broadcasters at RTÉ is over. And in its place is the era of big beast bean counters. Gone – except for one – are the presenters on high six-figure salaries. Vanquished too are all traces of Noel Kelly, for so long the invisible hand in “the market” for RTÉ presenters we heard about whenever someone was dispatched out in the media to justify their sky-high salaries. Now instead of stars, the top 10 earners’ list is a catalogue of suits – head of this, director of that, chief of the other.READ MOREWriting in this newspaper in 1998, amid the first murmurings of public unease about presenter salaries, Muiris Mac Conghail estimated that the then-director general was probably fifth or sixth on the list of best-paid people at RTÉ. The top earner and the original big beast, Gay Byrne, was earning four or five times as much, about £500,000. Now that situation has been directly inverted. Part of the explanation for the rise and subsequent precipitous fall of presenter salaries is simply the changing, much less concentrated media landscape. When Gay Byrne arrived on screen, his paternalistic and occasionally prophetic patter still a work in progress, there were just three channels available to Irish viewers, and Ireland was on the cusp of enormous social change. He offered the country something it desperately needed – a kitchen table around which the State could talk to itself – and left when digital media was still in its infancy. Gaybo’s timing was always impeccable.The other Byrne, Claire, turned out to be the last of the big beasts. She was the only presenter still among the top 10 best paid in 2025, with earnings of €280,000. She left for Newstalk, in the service of what she tersely characterised as her “financial dignity”. By departing when she did she showed a flair for timing almost as good as her namesake’s.[ Claire Byrne: ‘I never really went into this game to be famous’Opens in new window ]To understand why salaries were allowed to run so rampant, you need to cast your mind back to the Ireland of the 1970s and 1980s. It was a place consumed by insecurity and riddled with uncertainty about its place in the world. Over the course of Gay Byrne’s career, the church would cede its grip on the nation’s mores, leaving a vacuum that was filled by a procession of smooth-talking, hyper-confident men. They came to us through the gates of Leinster House, they rose through the ranks of the big banks and the property world, and they smirked at us out of our television screens and chided and soothed us over the national airwaves. These men – and the few women who managed to elbow their way into their ranks – would stroll into our lives and tell us what to think, how to behave and what our values should be. Instead of recognising that their secret sauce was largely a product of getting into the game – banking, politics, property or TV – at the right time, we bought into the idea that they had almost mystical qualities that demanded recognition with salaries fit for minor deities.Here’s Pat Kenny (peak earnings: €950,976 in 2008) speaking to The Irish Times Magazine in 2013, about Gay Byrne’s 1998 salary of half a million pounds. “That was the rate for the top man. If you correct that now for inflation, [that’s] a couple of mill,” he said breezily. “The reality is there is a market and that market determines.”The idea that there was “a market” that would swoop in and jet our “top men” away for a yet more glittering career in the UK or even – so it was occasionally whispered – the US has been largely disproved by Ryan Tubridy (peak earnings: €752,950 in 2012) and his stop-start career in the UK. But the mythmaking persisted. At one point, Noel Curran said he “defied anyone” to point to another presenter who could do a 20-minute interview as well as Kenny. No one would dream of issuing such an ludicrous challenge during the age of 90-minute podcasts with global audiences. [ RTÉ spent €8.5m on redundancy packages for 67 people in 2025Opens in new window ]The question of who, exactly, was lurking in the wings waiting to poach RTÉ’s top 10 broadcasters was rarely interrogated. It is true that when Gerry Ryan died in 2010, advertising revenues at 2fm tanked. But it’s still not clear whether any competitor could have stumped up a salary of €576,000. Sure, Kenny subsequently managed to land a job in Newstalk, as did Claire Byrne. But for all his protestations about the value of the “top men”, when Kenny moved to Newstalk and Sean O’Rourke took over, listenership rose. It’s clear now that RTÉ was like a hapless house buyer caught in a ghost bidding war against itself.The real shame is what all of this – the rampant greed and profligacy – has done to RTÉ. The public insist they trust it, but they’re less willing than ever to put their €160 where their mouth is. Politicians are more energised by the thought of being seen to give it a hammering at Oireachtas committees than coming up with a plan for its future. But after all the self-flagellation and controversies over the cost of drivers and redundancy packages and Derek Mooney’s contract, we still need an RTÉ. We need media competition and robust, reliable journalism. We need stories about Irish life. We need an incubator for presenting and programme-making talent. And we still need a kitchen table around which we can talk to ourselves.