Joe Duffy presented Liveline for the final time on Friday (June 27) after more than 26 years at the helm Ireland's leading phone-in show and 37 years altogether with RTÉ.

Signing off this afternoon following more than an hour of tributes, musical performances and celebrity impressions, Duffy said it had been a privilege to host Liveline and assured listeners that "the Liveline remains open".

For a quarter of a century, radio listeners have been encouraged to "Talk to Joe," sharing with Duffy their problems, ranging from personal annoyances to national scandals.

The show is listened to by more than 300,000 people every weekday afternoon and attracted upwards of 400,000 listeners at its peak, and the identity of Duffy's replacement as host is presently one of the hottest questions in Irish media.

As one of RTÉ's biggest stars, Duffy is a fixture of the annual list of the 10 top-earning presenters at Montrose.

Following the departure of Ryan Tubridy in mid-2022, Duffy became the national broadcaster's highest-paid presenter with an annual salary of €351,000 paid to his company Cladaghgreen Ltd.

Duffy's exit from the company will assist with director general Kevin Bakhurst's efforts to set a hard pay cap of €250,000, in line with his own salary and that of Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty.

The Dubliner joined RTÉ Radio as a producer in 1989 and moved behind the microphone first as a reporter on The Gay Byrne Show before presenting several programmes, and replacing Marian Finucane as permanent host of Liveline in January 1999 following a successful trial run the previous summer.

RTÉ first partially disclosed presenter salaries in 2002 following pressure from the Information Commissioners to adhere with Freedom of Information requests.

The top salary of €400,000 to €500,000 was believed to have gone to Pat Kenny, then presenter of the Late Late and Today on RTÉ Radio 1, with Duffy, Finucane or Gerry Ryan expected to have earned the second-highest salary (€300,000 and €400,000).

The third-highest salary was between €200,000 and €300,000, and three presenters were reported to have been paid between €150,000 and €200,000.

By the time RTÉ started releasing annual salary information, Duffy was making €409,889, which was less than half as much as Kenny's 2008 pay (€950,976), and behind the likes of Ryan (€629,865), Finucane (€570,000), and Tubridy (€533,333).

The crash saw pay cuts at the broadcaster, with Kenny's pay falling to €729,604 in 2009. Duffy, the fifth-highest-earning presenter that year, was paid €389,314.

Over the subsequent two years, Duffy's salary would decline to €384,065 and then €377,776, making him the fourth-highest paid star following Ryan's untimely death in 2010.

His salary for 2012 was €300,000, down by more than a quarter (-27%) for his previous peak earnings in 2008. At this time, Liveline was bringing in regular audiences of 420,000, rivalling Morning Ireland as the most popular programme on Irish radio.

Duffy's pay rose to €303,750 in 2013 and then €416,893 in 2014 following the upturn in listenership, making him the second best-paid presenter behind Tubridy (€495,000), who by this point had been presenting the Late Late for several years.

The presenter had also moved into television with Liveline: Call Back, in which he followed up with some of the most memorable stories from Liveline.

He also hosted the religion-focused Joe Duffy's Spirit Level, Local Heroes about individuals creating employment in their communities, and he took over The Meaning of Life from Byrne.

Outside of radio and television, Duffy authored Children of the Rising and Children of the Troubles, respectively about the young people who died during the Easter Rising and the Troubles. He also formerly wrote a column for the Irish Mail on Sunday.

Duffy's salary slipped to €398,988 in 2015, putting him behind Tubridy and Ray D'Arcy, and it remained consistently at that level in the following years: €398,988 in 2016; €398,738 in 2017; €404,988 in 2018; and €392,494 in 2019.

Republished accounts following the payments scandal show Duffy made €360,650 in 2020 and €351,000 in 2021, the level at which he has remained in the years since.

In the midst of the payments scandal, Duffy said on air that "the figures that are on my contract are the exact figures I receive," adding that he was paid €300,000 for Liveline and €51,000 for his television work.

It was in 2019 that he signed a four-year contract that was extended for a further two years under "exact same conditions, no changes and no increases" in 2023.

The latest accounts for Duffy's Claddaghgreen Ltd show accumulated profits increased by €37,913 from €583,086 to €620,999 in the 12 months to the end of April 2024, although profit after tax declined from €62,645 to €37,913.

The company's cash reserves also decreased year-on-year from €392,169 to €287,954 as liabilities rose from €217,941 to €326,051.

Duffy and his wife, June Meehan, who serve as company directors were paid €270,000 in remuneration and other benefits. The couple, who are parents to triplets, jointly own the company.

Photo: Joe Duffy. (Pic: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie)