Subscriber OnlyOpinion

There has never been a sense that Catherine Martin was really on top of things

Minister’s handling of RTÉ controversy has been as effective as trying to grab a wet bar of soap

Catherine holding image

RTE crisis: Catherine Martin is coming under increasing criticism for her handling of the financial crisis at RTÉ. Illustration: Paul Scott

Una Mullally's face
Una Mullally
Wed Mar 6 2024 - 06:41

Throughout her ministerial career, Catherine Martin has been seen as a positive force for the arts in Ireland. She has leadership of a department that encompasses tourism, culture, arts, sports, media and the Gaeltacht. This “everything drawer” portfolio speaks to an intrinsic lack of prioritisation by Government of each individual aspect. Arts and culture should clearly be a single ministry. Martin might come to wish that indeed was the case.

When a portfolio is this broad, the balance of attention and prioritisation can be tricky to strike. But it is beyond doubt that a key priority of the Minister has to have been the RTÉ crisis. It’s a controversy that has placed the very future of an organisation central to Irish life in jeopardy.

Getting on top of it demands attention, scrutiny, calmness and authority. The metaphors abound: put out the fires, grasp the nettles, steer the ship. Yet Martin’s leadership approach to RTÉ has taken on the gestures of someone trying to grab a wet bar of soap. Every attempt at getting a grip has sent the omnishambles leaping off into a new direction.

It doesn’t particularly matter that Martin isn’t seen as a Cabinet heavyweight, until it does. Such assessments are sometimes rooted in archaic ideas about leadership style.

READ MORE

Her department has certainly been busy. During the pandemic, her actions in the arts were entirely necessary for a sector and its workers whose livelihoods and futures were especially threatened. Arts Council funding leapt from €75 million in 2019 to €134 million in 2024. She established the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce. The Basic Income for the Arts has transformed people’s lives. Multiple pilot schemes have enlivened cultural life. In this realm, Martin has delivered. She is seen as quietly radical.

Surely someone pumping out dynamic policy in one aspect of their role isn’t randomly bad at another? It turns out that this may be so.

Until 2020, RTÉ was the Department of Communications’ problem (never its opportunity, apparently), but now it’s all Martin’s. Since this parade of fiascos began marching last year, there has never been a sense that she was really on top of things. Over time, what could be interpreted as calmness also had the hallmarks of distance, with a hint of being overwhelmed. It turns out this assessment wasn’t just generic whining from various politicians, or journalists hunting for scalps.

It has been interesting to observe how Ní Raghallaigh is characterised in the broader industry. She is spoken about with respect

The now former RTÉ board chair, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, has eviscerated Martin’s record and her handling of and statements about the RTÉ crisis, including some of her remarks at last week’s Oireachtas committee hearing. Leaving every other achievement in office aside, if a call was made on the basis of Ní Raghallaigh’s lengthy statement, it’s hard to see how Martin could continue in her role as Minister.

Although clearly burned by her relationship with the Minister breaking down and the manner by which she was ousted – which even those devoid of ego would experience as a mark of disrespect – Ní Raghallaigh’s motivation for detailing her version of events at length does at least appear to be related to those oft-repeated words of accountability and transparency. By now, Martin has more to lose. Her version of events must stick. So why do they feel slippery?

As yet, Martin has offered no evidence that ousting Ní Raghallaigh was a worthwhile, sensible or even logical endeavour. Nobody’s perfect, but it’s clear that RTÉ has lost a valuable leader in Ní Raghallaigh. In her place comes a former managing partner at KPMG and current chairman of ESB, Terence O’Rourke, through a process – if you can even call it that – that was rushed, to put it mildly.

The swiftness of his appointment stands in stark contrast to what must have been close to a pleading ask of the Minister to set about filling the rest of the vacancies on the board last year, something urgently needed, as Ní Raghallaigh outlined in her Monday statement.

Considering that those who work across media and the film and television industries have a tendency to cut the back off RTÉ at every opportunity – and almost everyone in the independent sector and within the organisation has an RTÉ horror story – it has been interesting to observe how Ní Raghallaigh is characterised in the broader industry. She is spoken about with respect. When it comes to attitudes towards senior people in RTÉ, this is an anomaly (something telling in and of itself). This, from my observations, is not some luvvie consensus but an authentic assessment.

Ní Raghallaigh has occasionally faltered. Early on, she had to apologise to Martin for not telling the Minister that she had asked former director general Dee Forbes to resign. That seemed like a big deal, but with stability and confidence at stake, Martin moved past it, praising Ní Raghallaigh for acting swiftly when the auditors initially sounded the alarm over payments. Ní Raghallaigh has also repeatedly intimated her support and admiration for the current director general, Kevin Bakhurst, a view not universal among RTÉ workers.

Siún Ní Raghallaigh, the now former RTÉ board chair, has eviscerated Catherine Martin’s record and her handling of the RTÉ crisis. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos

Ní Raghallaigh’s “Is this a flashback?” attitude regarding the role of the remuneration committee in signing off on exit packages coming back into the spotlight was naive. The reason this got heat is partly down to the sense that it was never brightly lit. This is something journalists were bound to latch on to, especially given that former director of strategy Rory Coveney characterised his own departure from RTÉ as a resignation, which – when it came to light he had received an exit package – was followed up by a muddled assertion from RTÉ that Bakhurst had already answered this on his first day. In fact, what Bakhurst had said then was not clear at all.

How many reports do we need? How many Dáil debates must be had? How many Oireachtas committees must discuss the matter?

But it’s the process through which former chief financial officer Richard Collins received an exit package that Ní Raghallaigh, the Minister and the department became hung up on. It seems the issue here may be rooted not in the chair’s communication, but the department’s translation of that communication. The upshot is: if the department knew, what was Ní Raghallaigh meant to do? What was her mistake?

She failed to make the Minister aware of information at two meetings when, according to Ní Raghallaigh, that information was already known. She then clarified that. This – for some bizarre reason – set in motion a series of actions by the Minister that would lead to Ní Raghallaigh’s position becoming untenable. This still doesn’t make sense.

The subtext is a deeper undercurrent of failure not solely owned by Martin, but by successive ministers and governments.

The dawdling on a progressive funding model for RTÉ has been chronic. Had this been addressed years ago, there would at least be a semblance of security. Arguably, governments could not control the wild failures of governance and the catalogue of financial chicanery at RTÉ. If the board didn’t appear to have oversight – or wasn’t allowed to have oversight – how could the department, Minister or Government? But the funding model is something this Government has been tasked with addressing. And what it has done amounts to rumination, not action.

The Government of 2011 to 2016 was all about the Public Service Broadcast Charge. In 2012, Pat Rabbitte was soap-boxing about how inadequate the licence fee model was. Various reports and public consultations followed. In 2019, it was announced that a broadcasting charge would replace the licence fee in 2024. In September 2020, the Future of Media Commission was established. In July 2022, the commission produced its report, with specific recommendations in relation to RTÉ's financing.

In the meantime, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland became Coimisiún na Meán. The Irish Film Board became Screen Ireland. New sectors, such as film and television streaming, surged. Podcasting became a gigantic industry. Entire media eras have crumbled and been birthed while successive governments have twiddled their thumbs.

It doesn’t particularly matter that Martin isn’t seen as a Cabinet heavyweight, until it does

On this, how many reports do we need? How many Dáil debates must be had? How many Oireachtas committees must discuss the matter? How many pitches, diversions, bright and bad ideas, and back and forths in media need to happen before Government does its job?

The current rolling scandal did not create this conundrum. The funding model of RTÉ has been discussed for the entirety of many people’s careers in media. Everyone who works across television and film knows “development” can have a very specific, draining, limbo-type atmosphere. But perhaps no development process has been as turgid as that of bringing RTÉ's funding model into the 21st century.

It felt as though RTÉ leadership adopting a forward-looking motion was at least becoming an intention with Ní Raghallaigh. You’re talking about someone who helped found TNaG, which became TG4, and chaired that board for a decade, someone who was the chief executive of Ardmore Studios in Wicklow, and who was a driving force behind the establishment of Troy Studios in Limerick, and its chief executive. Back in 2018, Ní Raghallaigh said of the defunct Dell factory which became Troy’s home: “Other people saw a derelict building, I saw a studio. I saw stages.” By August 2017, NBC’s production, Nightflyers, was in situ, with Troy on track to become Ireland’s largest studio. That’s vision.

Where is the Minister’s? Where is RTÉ's? And how long will the picture remain blurred before such vision comes into focus?

Right now, all we have is static. What Martin embarked upon a fortnight ago amounts to white noise, a distortion of her own making. At a time of chaos, what was needed was stability. What is absolutely bizarre is that the Minister appears to have conjured this chaos totally unnecessarily. It’s a plot twist outside of the actual storyline, as Laura Slattery wrote in a fine piece of analysis. The question remains: why?

If she can’t answer this, if Ní Raghallaigh’s damning assertions that Martin was hands-off and not available to her directly (and we’ve no reason to believe that’s not true, unless Ní Raghallaigh’s personality has somehow changed to that of someone who burns bridges for sport), then what of the Minister’s future? In a threadbare statement released on Monday evening, Martin offered zero reassurance and no countering of the points Ní Raghallaigh made.

It appears now that some stumbles along the way – inevitable in an omnishambles – regarding Ní Raghallaigh’s own work since she became chair may have some part in the deterioration in the lines of communication between Ní Raghallaigh and the Minister.

If Catherine Martin wasn’t consistently directly engaging with the chair of RTÉ's board – as Ní Raghallaigh asserts – and having all these meetings she spoke about, then what else was she doing that was more important?

But Ní Raghallaigh says she only had a “handful” of meetings with the Minister since she took up the role as board chair. In the Dáil on Tuesday, the Taoiseach said Martin met Ní Raghallaigh 11 times over nine months. We know that two of these meetings were in the week of the Minister’s Prime Time bombshell. What and when were the others? Were they comprehensive meetings? Face to face? Phone calls? Chance encounters at a bus stop? This matters, because a Minister is saying one thing, and the now-ousted board chair of the national broadcaster is saying another.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard from people across the sector over the past fortnight: why didn’t Martin get on the phone to Ní Raghallaigh before going on television? Why didn’t she pull out of Prime Time to sort things out before riffing live on air? That may have caused a kerfuffle, sure, but nothing compared to what actually happened. And if the Minister for whatever reason didn’t want to do that, why didn’t she tell Miriam O’Callaghan: yes, I have confidence in the chair right now, and hopefully when we meet, any confusion can be cleared up? With multiple bombs ticking, why blow up Ní Raghallaigh’s position?

Again, the RTÉ crisis has to have been Martin’s priority. If she wasn’t consistently directly engaging with the chair of RTÉ's board – as Ní Raghallaigh asserts – and having all these meetings she spoke about, then what else was she doing that was more important?

This whole saga has gone from a must-watch to a when-will-it-end. If Martin cannot clear this mess up immediately, and contradict, with evidence and truth, the assertions in Ní Raghallaigh’s statement, then it is she who needs to consider her position. If she doesn’t, it won’t be down to a belief that her handling of the crisis has been adequate, or that moving against Ní Raghallaigh was fair or reasonable, but a reluctance in Government to see a Minister fall, and the destabilising effect that would have on the Green Party as a Coalition partner.

On Tuesday, the Government was circling the wagons, all on-message that Martin is safe. But that’s just politics. There’s no point in a Minister tacitly expressing at various stages that an organisation, a board and an executive aren’t up to scratch when, right now, it doesn’t look like she is either.

LATEST STORIES