RTÉ paid over €500k in car allowances to staff last year

Ken Foxe

RTÉ paid out more than €570,000 in ‘car allowances’ last year to a select group of 54 members of staff.

The broadcaster said such payments were slowly being phased out but that four people received between €20,000 and €25,000 in 2024.

Payments to the four employees totalled €98,900 – or an average of €24,725 each.

Five staff members were entitled to car allowances worth between €15,000 and €20,000, according to records released under FOI.

Together, those five employees shared €88,133 through the payment, an average of around €17,600 per person.

There were a further 19 RTÉ staff who received car allowances ranging from €10,000 to €15,000.

The overall cost in that payment category was €241,835 – or the equivalent of around €12,700 for each employee.

Two people were entitled to car allowances worth between €7,500 and €10,000 annually.

Those payments totalled €19,498 for an average of around €9,750 per annum.

There were 13 staff members who were paid allowances of between €5,000 and €7,500, according to the records.

That category of payment totalled €89,538, or roughly €6,900 per person.

A further seven employees received car allowances of between €2,500 and €5,000, while four were entitled to payments of up to €2,500.

Asked about the payments, an RTÉ spokesman said car allowances were no longer part of contracts as part of reforms introduced in 2023 by Director General Kevin Bakhurst and his leadership team.

The spokesman said the number of people in receipt of allowances had dropped to 45 this October, as compared to the figure of 54 for 2024. At the beginning of 2023, there were 61 staff entitled to the car payment.

The spokesman said: “[This is] a reduction of more than 26 per cent over the past two years.”

He said that car allowances had formed part of some employee contracts going back to at least the 1980s.

"In 2005, in order to bring more coherence and simplicity to management allowances, all existing allowances were consolidated and re-named as ‘car allowances,’ which are non-pensionable," he said.