Consider Bertie Ahern's make-up, which costs 480 a week and for which he insists on dipping his greasy fingers into the national till because he's apparently too tight to pay for it himself out of his already stupendous salary.

People got a bit annoyed when they first heard about that. Then they started laughing indulgently at it.

Some of the more institutionalised hacks even made merry with the idea that it was "because he's worth it." Then it was forgotten altogether.

Those who go on about it now are merely annoying but harmless cranks . . . hairylegged, lentil-eating failed consumers.

Now it emerges that the going rate for reading from a list of questions given to you by your researchers, and chipping in from time to time with absurd nonsequiturs and feeble opinions of your own, is almost 900,000 a year. The broadcaster in question, Pat Kenny, presents 10 hours of radio a week, plus The Late Late Show, and takes the entire summer off. We weren't told how much we're paying the researchers and producers who do all the real work. We did find out that it takes almost half-a-million euro a year ( 487,492) to supply the nation with Gerry Ryan.

RTE communications director Bride Rosney was quoted as saying these salaries were "the market rate." Certainly people seem to think nothing of the bosses of private enterprises paying one another massive sums of money while bemoaning the necessity of paying the workers anything at all. But you and I are the bosses of the civil servants in RTE, are we not? Was that not our 3.3m that the state broadcaster saw fit to pay its top 10 'personalities' in 2004?

British audiences hit the roof recently when the daft salaries of its top stars were revealed. Terry Wogan, for example, makes £800,000. But if the BBC wants to give seven figures to its Chris Evanses and Jonathan Rosses, it costs us nothing. If Newstalk 106 wanted to let Eamon Dunphy's salary consume most of the budget for his morning radio programme, we can marvel at the stupidity of it, but it costs us nothing.

Rosney was also quoted as saying radio was "very much a personality-led medium." The great pity is that, when it comes to RTE radio at least, that is the truth. Other countries' public service broadcasters seem to manage very well with a quarter of the 'personalities' and four times the number of ideas.

It's worth pointing out, for example, that the salaries of the presenters on Radio 4, where most of the BBC's public service broadcasting is done, don't even feature. 'Personality' broadcasting will always draw listeners . . . people seem to like getting their tempers up from time to time . . . but it is not a public service.

We might even feel less resentful if the 'personalities' that RTE overrates and overpays had not been manufactured by RTE in the first place . . . forged from nothing in its own endless, centripetal, state-subsidised PR machine, which whirls minor talents from radio to television to the RTE Guide and back again until they can't help but become household names.

How well would some of RTE's bestpaid stars really fare if they were thrown to the free-market wolves? Admittedly, some of them are very good at their jobs . . . Marian Finucane, Joe Duffy, John Kelly, Derek Mooney . . . but just as many are not.

What if RTE were to pay its 'personalities', say, three or four times the average industrial wage, instead of up to 28 times the average industrial wage? Let's imagine for instance, that Pat Kenny is not worth more than 10 or 11 of you or me. RTE might then do one of two things: take less money from the taxpayer, or desist from the dishonourable practice (in a state-owned broadcasting station) of bombarding us with constant advertising.

RTE is a not-for-profit organisation that we pay to provide us with journalism and culture free from commercial and political interference. We're also paying it to make millionaires out of mediocre people. This is serious.