Bakhurst to describe RTÉ payments scandal as ‘shameful’

The new director general of RTÉ is to tell an Oireachtas committee that the controversy over undisclosed payments to Ryan Tubridy led to “one of the most shameful and damaging episodes in the organisation’s history”.

Kevin Bakhurst, the incoming director general, will tell the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday that it remains a source of frustration that there are “gaps in evidence and missing personal testimonies, that could irrefutably evidence all aspects of the chain of events, what informed or influenced those events, and why this occurred.”

Senior RTÉ executives are expected to challenge accounts given by Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly about payments to Mr Tubridy when they appear at the committee on Thursday. It is expected RTÉ will challenge a number of assertions made and will address the account of Mr Kelly and Mr Tubridy around the arrangement with Renault – which saw him paid an extra €75,000 a year, ultimately sourced from RTÉ.

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Mr Bakhurst will tell the committee that irrespective of what multiple investigations into the broadcaster find, a number of things are “beyond dispute”, including that the station should not be brokering or facilitating commercial arrangements with its contractors and that the level of fees involved in contracts like this are “too high”.

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“We should have operated with greater transparency, and should have applied much higher standards of honesty and integrity in terms of its public statements. The public were misled, as were you as public representatives. That is completely unacceptable. I want to assure you that lessons have been learned, and actions are being taken,” he will say.

In his opening statement circulated to members of the PAC, Adrian Lynch, the acting deputy director general, said that RTÉ “should have operated with greater transparency, and should have applied much higher standards of honesty and integrity in terms of its public statements.

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“The public were misled, as were you as public representatives,” he will say.

Separately, an external investigation into the accuracy of published figures for the pay of top on-air earners at RTÉ has found that figures published for Mr Tubridy across an eight year period to 2016 were correct.

With regard to Mr Tubridy’s earnings, the review finds that for the period from 2008 to 2016, there were “no errors in the published remuneration figures by RTÉ for Mr Tubridy”.

A wider review found that figures for top earners were correct across a 12-year period ending last year.

The review, carried out by Grant Thornton, is the first element of the second phase of the firm’s work on RTÉ's finances and governance. A second element, concerning the allocation of €120,000 in earnings to Mr Tubridy during the period 2017-2019, is still under way.

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The review finds that with one minor exception relating to untaken leave, “all remuneration figures have been correctly stated publicly and properly accounted for by RTÉ in each year”. Work on 2009 and 2008, according to the report, has been held up as RTÉ is “experiencing difficulties” in identifying whether it has all the relevant documentation - something Grant Thornton says is not unusual for a full period this long ago. The firm is promising an update “in due course”.

Board chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh will tell the committee that Mr Bakhurst is already “steadying the ship” after a “distressing saga”.

Days after Mr Tubridy’s agent, Noel Kelly, complained that he and the presenter were only given notice of the statement regarding the Grant Thornton report half an hour before it was released by RTÉ on June 22nd, she will tell the committee that “individuals relevant to the fact-finding exercise were interviewed by Grant Thornton, and as stated in the Grant Thornton report, fair procedures applied to everyone in the production of that report

“The Grant Thornton Report was subsequently furnished to the Audit and Risk Committee and to the broader RTÉ Board. It was evident that there was a pressing need, and indeed a duty, to correct the record regarding payments that had come into the public domain,” she will say.