Fran McNulty
DAVID NALLY, RTÉ editorial adviser, RTÉ content (salary €150,000), was obviously aggrieved at being ‘dragged’ into the Montrose maelstrom last week by Irish Times columnist Justine McCarthy. But given his role and remuneration as well as his professional altercation with journalist Fran McNulty, Nally appears to be bereft of any PR sensitivity at the worst possible time for RTÉ management.
Despite the sense of victimhood in his letter of response to the IT (“misconceptions and myths abound”), Nally cannot deny that a complaint against him by McNulty was upheld, as reported in The Phoenix last year (see edition 20/5/22). Goldhawk was able to identify McNulty in that article, which followed another article in the Sunday Times (also by McCarthy) that did not identify McNulty, who had complied with the confidentiality of the inquiry process at RTÉ.
Adding to the then prevailing sense of injustice in that period was the negative report undertaken by outside agency Resolve Ireland into the culture and atmosphere at RTÉ. But what enraged many staff was that Nally was awarded a new management appointment and went from one position as managing editor, current affairs to the role of editorial adviser to the director of content on the same salary, without any advertisement or job application procedures. This was, as the NUJ stated, contrary to the national broadcasters employment policy.
As Goldhawk put it at the time: “His [Nally’s] old job will now be handed to somebody else, advertised or not, meaning that this in-house spat has resulted in an extra €150,000 being added to RTÉ’s wage bill at a time when director-general Dee Forbes is accused by Government politicians of coming the poor mouth in terms of the licence fee.”
The opening given by David Nally to NUJ Irish secretary Seamus Dooley to savage RTÉ’s management practices in a lengthy, prominent letter to the IT this week means Nally will not be thanked by his colleagues above stairs for his untimely public intervention.
