Broadcaster Claire Byrne decided to leave RTÉ after 15 years,citing her 50th birthday as a key factor in seeking a new challenge at national self-reliant radio station Newstalk.
Byrne announced her departure last August to host a new morning show on the Dublin-based station, as Pat Kenny transitions to weekend programming.
The Laois native will rejoin Newstalk, where she previously worked, beginning February 3rd, hosting the 9am to 12pm weekday slot.
Speaking on Friday night’s Late Late Show, Byrne explained, “I turned 50 last summer and it’s a funny one, isn’t it? It does make you think about where you’re going, what you’re doing, are you a bit too comfy in your seat…?”
“So Newstalk came along and said they had huge ambition, ‘We wont to grow the audience’ and I initially thought ‘I’m grand where I am, thank you very much’ and then I thought, you know what? Why am I not meeting this challenge? they think I can do it, why don’t I?
“So I said I’ll give it go, I’ll do it. If I had stayed here in RTÉ, I was going to be very well paid to stay here, I’ve been honest about what I was earning in RTÉ, I would have been getting a pay cut if I had stayed and let’s not make any bones of it, that was a factor but I wasn’t going to starve if I’d stayed here, I was very happy here.”
She added, “Though, did I want to try and stretch my chops a bit, did I want to push on and try something different? Yes, I always do and ultimately that was the decision I made and I’m excited to get started.”
Asked by Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty about reporting on the 2023 pay scandals that impacted RTÉ,Byrne described the situation as “awful,it was awful. It was incredibly arduous for everybody in RTÉ.”
“Even tonight coming in here,it’s still a topic of conversation.We didn’t know what was going on, we didn’t know what was going to happen day to day, our colleagues and managers were in front of Oireachtas committees.
“So I’ve outlined the problems for them – I can’t dance… at all, my husband would be great at it, I’m very busy and I’ve got three children so their response is ‘well, you’d only be on it for two weeks anyway because you’d be voted off.'”
You can watch Friday’s late Late Show on the RTÉ Player
