Anne Doyle, a former news anchor for RTE, has spoken out about the national broadcaster’s gender pay gap, and has praised fellow female presenters for speaking out on the issue.
Doyle joined RTE as a newsreader in 1978 and worked with the television network for 33 years. She is now urging current female employee’s to air any grievances they have with the situation surrounding their pay.
Since the controversy erupted, Doyle has spoken out about her personal experience with the gender pay gap. She recalled to the best of her memory that never felt “short changed” and if she was aware of any gaps in her pay she would have been “very cross indeed”.
Doyle went onto explain that if there were any pay gaps when she was a working newsreader with fellow male employees, it would have been because of a difference in work roles, and not because of gender.
The controversy surrounding this issue has been ongoing and has come to a head recently as some of the network’s most senior female presenters are threatening to leave if the issue is not resolved.
This crisis first erupted when it was revealed that RTE newsreader Sharon Nà Bheolain earns approximately €80,000 less than her co-presenter, Bryan Dobson.
Sources have said that NÃ Bheolain is adamant that she feels no animosity towards her co-worker and insists that they are very close friends.
Other female news readers such as Blathnaid Nà Chofaigh and Martina Fitzgerald have spoken out  about the need for this divergence to be addressed as it has now become a fundamental issue for all female workers being paid arbitrarily.
The most update figures from the RTE offices that were published in 2014, provide information that of the top 10 earners, three of them were all men and worked in the RTE newsroom.
The top earner from RTE is The Late Late Show presenter and Radio host, Ryan Tubridy who earns €495,000 per annum.
RTE has come out and said it will update it’s information on these figures by the end of this year.
In a recent statement, RTE have claimed “RTÉ salaries and fees take into account a wide range of factors including levels of experience, length of service and range of duties or programming a person is involved in. RTÉ does not comment on individual staff salaries.”
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