RTÉ’s director of commercial Geraldine O’Leary has announced she will take early retirement from her role with immediate effect.
In a statement on Monday, she said: "My career at RTÉ is a great source of pride and honour to me. Bringing my retirement forward by a number of weeks is not something I had anticipated.
"However, I recognise that a fresh leadership team, starting today, is vital as Kevin Bakhurst sets out to renew RTÉ, and I have agreed to facilitate that.
"The talented Commercial Team at RTÉ will continue to co-operate fully with all requests for information. I would like to thank them, along with my industry colleagues and friends, past and present, who have shown me much needed support in recent weeks.
"Over more than 40 years in the advertising industry, I have acted with integrity, and my positive reputation has been hard-earned. I truly hope that this will be my legacy.
"I believe in the importance of public service broadcasting and I am proud of the vital contribution that RTÉ's commercial activities have played in sustaining public service media in our dual-funded system."
Meanwhile, the new RTÉ director-general Kevin Bakhurst said: “I’d like to thank Geraldine for her huge contribution to RTÉ over many years. Geraldine has guided our commercial team through significant change and many challenges.
"She has brought in substantial commercial revenue over the years to help deliver high quality programmes and serve our audiences.
"Geraldine is much liked and admired by both our commercial partners and her colleagues at RTÉ. And she is rightly recognised as a trailblazer in what was a tough and male-dominated industry.”
Ms O’Leary joined RTÉ in 1997 as manager television sales and was promoted to director sales and marketing in 1999.
In 2003, she was appointed commercial director of RTÉ Television.
She was appointed group head of commercial RTÉ in January 2018 and was responsible for leading all of the divisional and cross-divisional commercial staff and operations at the broadcaster.
The news comes as RTÉ have been reeling since it emerged last month that it under-reported the salary paid to star presenter Ryan Tubridy and failed to disclose €345,000 of additional payments to him between 2017 and 2022.
The furore has since widened amid further disclosures about RTÉ’s internal financial, accounting and governance practices and its expenditure on corporate hospitality for advertising clients.
Ms O'Leary recently appeared at the Oirechtas Media Commitee and Public Accounts Committee where she was grilled about the payments alongside other representative from RTÉ.
