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Laura Slattery: Everybody involved in this rolling RTÉ omni-crisis has literally lost the plot

Minister for Media Catherine Martin’s ‘deep disappointment’ with Siún Ní Raghallaigh is much ado about absolutely nothing

Communication issues: Catherine Martin during a press conference at Government Buildings in Dublin. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
Communication issues: Catherine Martin during a press conference at Government Buildings in Dublin. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
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Laura Slattery
Tue Feb 27 2024 - 06:15

Catherine Martin risks being hoisted by her own petard, I wrote on Friday, because if Shakespearean vibes weren’t already permeating the rolling RTÉ omni-crisis, they were from the moment the Minister for Media strode on to the Prime Time stage and lost the plot.

The latest episode in the RTÉ perma-mess may seem more convoluted than The Comedy of Errors, but what it increasingly resembles is one of those tragedies in which everybody of any importance is (metaphorically) dead by the end.

There has been a genre shift here in that RTÉ is not the villain for once, but the victim of an adversary whose main weapon is splitting hairs.

In a nutshell, Martin is ‘deeply disappointed’ because she didn’t know that RTÉ followed the correct procedure — correct on paper and correct in principle — when it reached an exit agreement with former finance chief Richard Collins

People are now openly laughing on air at the question of who would want to succeed Siún Ní Raghallaigh as chair of the RTÉ board — the same board that has three other vacancies with two more due to arise this year. RTÉ still doesn’t have a chief financial officer either, having advertised for one back in early November, but not to worry, I’m sure that’s fine.

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“Hoist with his own petard”, incidentally, is Hamlet — the preposition evolved to “by”, the verb to hoisted, no need to have an Oireachtas inquiry about it — though this new Minister-led kerfuffle channels the sound and fury of Macbeth and has escalated almost as fast.

In a nutshell, Martin is “deeply disappointed” because she didn’t know that RTÉ followed the correct procedure — correct on paper and correct in principle — when it reached an exit agreement with former finance chief Richard Collins. She didn’t know that this new process — which, I reiterate, is the appropriate one — applied in his case.

That’s it. That’s her complaint. I don’t have the bandwidth to follow every political blow-up. Are they always this stupid?

Indeed, the distinctive feature of Ní Raghallaigh’s forced resignation is that it hinges outright on more than one person’s inability to keep up

Maybe everyone is just tired. Every time I see or hear someone say there has been a “drip-feed” of information about RTÉ, I think the water pressure in their homes must be of Niagara-level intensity, because it seems to me to be pouring out in torrents as unstoppable as they are energy-depleting.

Indeed, the distinctive feature of Ní Raghallaigh’s forced resignation is that it hinges outright on more than one person’s inability to keep up.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute, John Mortimer once said, and that’s what we have here, now, in Month Nine, when everybody is so overloaded with micro-detail, their memories are glitching.

Newspapers, in the wake of rivals’ “exclusives”, are pointedly noting how they reported those same things “last summer”. Maybe the encores help? After all, people are being dragged out of retirement to fill in various blanks. At this rate, anyone who can explain off the top of their head what exactly Collins did wrong — other than join RTÉ — deserves a special prize.

Even at RTÉ, they genuinely seem to have lost track. When RTÉ's Sarah McInerney admitted to Kevin Bakhurst that she didn’t remember his fuzzy July 2023 reference to a payout for would-be musical impresario Rory Coveney, the director general replied that he had forgotten about it himself “until [the Irish Independent’s] Fionnán Sheahan mentioned it”.

But why is this relevant? Why? Would the Minister have preferred it if the committee had not been involved? Would it have been better had Bakhurst gone on a solo run, Dee Forbes-style?

Ní Raghallaigh’s absurd demise came after she flunked the oral, unintentionally “neglecting to recollect” in three hours of meetings with Martin last week that the board’s remuneration committee, which she also chaired, had approved the payout to Collins.

But why is this relevant? Why? Would the Minister have preferred it if the committee had not been involved? Would it have been better had Bakhurst gone on a solo run, Dee Forbes-style? Make it make sense.

In any case, Ní Raghallaigh contacted Martin’s department to correct her mistake and remind them that she had mentioned all this back in October when it happened. Is it possible for someone to be “misinformed” about something about which they were previously informed? I suppose if you ask the same question enough times, you eventually get a different reply. That’s how torture works.

Martin says the department’s former secretary general Katherine Licken recalls being told by phone that the independent mediation process in relation to Collins had “reached a conclusion”, but she doesn’t remember hearing about the remuneration committee’s role, while a September letter about this committee’s new terms omitted a specific reference to exit packages.

Again, why does this matter? Seriously, why? Was the approval process wrong? What was Bakhurst, keen to “exit” Collins as part of a post-Tubsgate management refresh, meant to have done? Run a social media poll?

The real problem, politically, is that Martin cannot say she did not know that Collins got a payout. She agreed during her Six-One interview with David McCullagh that she was “aware” that there had been an “outcome”. When he asked her why the remuneration committee’s role was important, Martin said she wanted to know whether the reforms had taken place. Great. Well, they have.

No end is nigh for this brain-melting saga, I regret to say. In true Shakespearean fashion, Martin’s solemn beheading of Ní Raghallaigh has raised more questions than answers

Luckily, memory aids are available. The Business Post checked back a Public Accounts Committee transcript where three of Martin’s officials heard RTÉ's former legal affairs director Paula Mullooly spell out the “more thorough” new system and its application to exit payments. RTÉ News dug out the October video. Still, a spokesman for Martin dismissed this as a “passing reference”. It seems no communication is enough.

The RTÉ chair should ensure that the Minister is in “full possession of the facts”, Martin insists. But how often must these facts be laid out afresh for her to be in full possession of them? A “direct line of communication” with a single human scarcely seems sufficient. Perhaps artificial intelligence would help. Call Nvidia, we’re going to need some new chips.

No end is nigh for this brain-melting saga, I regret to say. In true Shakespearean fashion, Martin’s solemn beheading of Ní Raghallaigh has raised more questions than answers. The RTÉ doom loop, fuelled by multidirectional outrage, sustained by lawyers’ and auditors’ fees, propelled by scornful looks and accessorised with poisoned chalices, continues today at the Oireachtas.

As, er, google, google, Henry V would put it, once more unto the breach.

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