Eileen Dunne has revealed she had secret tension with her former boss Dee Forbes before she retired from RTÉ.
The newsreader, who had long presented RTÉ’s Nine O’Clock News, worked at the national broadcaster for more than 40 years before she retired last November.
During a new interview with the Irish Independent, Eileen opened up about her departure from the station, and said: “I was ready for it, in a sense.”
“I thought about going five years ago but I was glad I worked through Covid. The pandemic taught me that being at home by myself was OK,” she continued.
“My son is living in Barcelona and my husband is an actor (Macdara Ó Fátharta, who plays the publican Tadhg Ó Direáin on Ros Na Rún) and away quite a lot. But I like my own company.
“I wasn’t ready [to leave five years ago] and I would have been going because I was cross. I was cross about things in general and in the newsroom. It was personal,” Eileen confessed.
“It was to do with the previous director general [Dee Forbes]. She was of no help. [Forbes’s attitude was], ‘You go if you want to go.’ But I won’t go there.”
Since her departure, RTÉ has been plunged into chaos by the ongoing payments scandal that emerged in June, when they admitted that Ryan Tubridy’s salary had been understated over the past six years.
The scandal sparked a complete overview of RTÉ’s operations as a whole, which is being lead by the broadcaster’s new Director General Kevin Bakhurst – who replaced Dee Forbes after she announced her early resignation in June.
Speaking about the scandal, Eileen said cracks started to show within the broadcaster a few years ago when it was revealed that Sharon Nà Bheoláin had been paid substantially less than her co-anchor Bryan Dobson.
“When that row erupted about male and female pay — and Sharon Nà Bheoláin, in fairness to her, put her head above the parapet at that time — it followed on from a similar situation at the BBC,” Eileen recalled.
“Kieran Mulvey came in at that time and conducted a survey, but his remit was limited and he never spoke to me (about the issues she had). But he actually really got it in that he understood that it wasn’t about male versus female pay, it was about transparency in the organisation.”
The 65-year-old said she has a lot of respect for Kevin Bakhurst, and explained that RTÉ “is an invidious position because it’s a public service broadcaster on one hand but it’s expected to be commercially viable on the other.”
“Private companies are not answerable to anyone but themselves. Politicians jumped on the bandwagon but that’s all part of it.
“If anything comes out of it, it’s that RTÉ will be broken up and some parts will be public service and some parts will be commercial.”
Eileen was speaking ahead of her upcoming stint on Dancing with the Stars in January, which she’s taking on with a “gammy foot”.
She said: “I can move but I’ve never done any formal dancing. When we get into our little bubble of rehearsals, you’d hope that it will become, well, not instinctive, but something approaching that.
“There’s no competition emerging yet. I’m sure there will be though. I don’t want to let myself down, or my partner, who is investing a lot of time in me.
“I have a bit of a gammy foot at the moment. The dresses are one more stunning than the next. It’s a completely different look to the newsroom.
“I’ve no problem moving about in heels — I wasn’t one of those people who said they’d never wear heels again after the pandemic; I feel at ease in them,” she added.
The new season of Dancing with the Stars returns to RTÉ One on January 7th.
