If the word psychodrama has been overused in Westminster politics in recent weeks, Ireland does psychodramas differently. While the UK is convulsed by the savagery of politics, ours is another episode of RTÉ’s existential struggle with itself. It’s not about the big questions such as, say, how its journalism and public support survive the new AI-driven era, nor about the hybrid business model that allows it to dominate the Irish market. It is just another grubby eruption about who in the station is earning what. As its enemies reach for the popcorn and lesser-known politicians prepare for their daytime TV glow-up, listeners focused on surviving geopolitics and the cost of living have to listen to more self-flagellation on the national broadcaster about the national broadcaster – the riveting issue being whether an employee is a bit of a producer or more of a presenter or vice versa because it may affect their public placing among RTÉ’s top 10 earners. Sick of it, said former government minister Mary Hanafin on the Brendan O’Connor show. “Sick of hearing about the salaries in RTÉ, sick of the top 10s ... It was a big story last year, and rightly so, but does anyone really care where anyone is on the list? I just wish they’d do the trawl and move on.”Upon which a few hundred thousand listeners (I’m guessing) nodded in vigorous agreement. O’Connor led his Sunday newspaper panel – which included Hanafin as well as a professor of politics, a national political editor and a teacher/broadcaster – in a nuanced discussion that ranged from Bertie Ahern’s offensive canvassing comments, to a quiet leadership battle, to risk-averse civil servants, to musician Tommy Fleming’s personal struggles. And of course O’Connor had to find time to shoehorn RTÉ’s accountancy misclassification in there too – lest he be accused of a cover-up presumably. It’s almost three years since Siún Ní Raghallaigh, then chairwoman of the RTÉ board, named the problems that came out in the Tubridy payments wash. She called the method of payments “an act designed to deceive”, and the slush fund “outrageous”. She accused the station of bidding against itself for top earners and committed to publishing the salaries of a further 90 alongside the usual top 10. She also planted a knife into the concept of the “talent”. The word should be binned, she said, because it reinforces a them and us culture.[ Derek Mooney row may prove to be minor blip for RTÉ. But broader questions remainOpens in new window ]Apart from her aspiration to publish the names of a further 90 salaried earners, to many observers it looks like RTÉ is getting on with the job. Governance structures are more robust. Egos have been levelled and salaries capped. Presenters who were tempted to move on, or who did actually move on, or who were made to move on, have discovered that the market is a colder place than suggested by the crazy salaries and byzantine deals done to retain them in the freewheeling years. That has yielded some Schadenfreude. RTÉ staff who sniff ongoing foot-dragging have a rational argument to make for trust and transparency; many are now working under far more pressurised and under-resourced conditions. But the noise coming from outside the building in this case seems disproportionate, to put it mildly. The relentless self-flagellation in 2023 was warranted when a swamp-draining job was required. That work was always going to entail time, legal jeopardy and high degrees of sensitivity. All legacy businesses have had to reckon with old culture, contracts and fearful incumbents and know there is nothing simple or swift about it. But with the trigger-happy Minister for Media and Communications, Patrick O’Donovan, in a perma-rage and the Oireachtas media committee gearing up for another public RTÉ slapping session today, that irresistible old bandwagon is rolling again. How the licence fee is spent should be of public concern, but so should the maintenance of the arm’s length principle between government and broadcaster in any spats or settlements. O’Donovan’s recent eye-popping threat to direct a review into media coverage of the fuel protests – he namechecked RTÉ – is a case in point. It’s not difficult to imagine a different bad-faith administration pushing that door once given leeway.[ RTÉ Radio 1’s new schedule sees listeners drop for key showsOpens in new window ]In theory, the non-stop noise around yet another salary scandal – if that’s what it is – is supposed to reflect concern for RTÉ’s survival in a medium under existential threat. In practice it can look very like a gaggle of politicians who – to use Hugh Linehan’s phrase – think about RTÉ primarily as a public institution to be governed rather than a media organisation competing for an audience. Last year nearly half the respondents to a Reuters Institute/Coimisiún na Meán survey said they used social media as a source of news in the previous week, a result which surely gladdens the hearts of bad faith actors everywhere. The Taoiseach, while demanding “full accountability” and the “highest standards possible” from RTÉ, also implicitly noted that threat. “We need to be very, very careful in terms of our democracy ... I think the kind of forces that are out there right now are more challenging than anyone ever had to deal with in any previous generation.”He’s right – a sense of proportion wouldn’t go amiss.