RTÉ crisis: Nine key moments from this week’s contentious Oireachtas hearings

RTÉ has not asked Ryan Tubridy to return the two €75,000 payments he received in 2022 but would welcome it if the money was voluntarily returned, the new director general, Kevin Bakhurst, told the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) on Thursday.

It was one of the key moments during the more than four-hour-long meeting. Here are some of the other highlights.

1. Two payments of €75,000 to Ryan Tubridy

On Tuesday, Ryan Tubridy and his agent, Noel Kelly, told two Oireachtas committees that he owed Late Late Show sponsor Renault six public appearances in return for two €75,000 payments that he got in 2022, but he would return the money if these appearances never went ahead.

In fact the two €75,000 payments came from RTÉ, not Renault, something Tubridy said he was not aware of until the huge controversy over “secret” payments to him exploded last month.

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On Thursday, Bakhurst was asked by Sinn Féin TD John Brady if RTÉ had sought the return of the money from Tubridy. No, he was told. There was a legal responsibility for RTÉ to pay the money, as it had underwritten the deal with the Late Late Show sponsor.

“There is the moral question, what is the right thing to do, and I think when we do come to have any discussions with Mr Tubridy ... I welcomed his offer the other day, and we’ll wait and see what he does about it.”

Bakhurst said at another stage: “Ryan Tubridy did nothing wrong in taking that money ... RTÉ will seek to recoup it.”

2. Does RTÉ believe Ryan Tubridy and Kelly when they say they thought the two €75,000 payments in 2022 had come from Renault?

In his opening statement, Adrian Lynch, interim deputy director general of RTÉ before Bakhurst took up his position, said: “We contend that the payments of €75,000 for year two and three of the commercial contract were pursued by NK Management [Kelly’s company] despite it knowing that the Renault contract was no longer in place.”

But during testimony Lynch said: “I think it was very clear from Mr Kelly’s testimony and I watched it that he was fully convinced when he raised those two invoices…that they were for Renault.”

RTÉ Chief financial officer Richard Collins, during questioning from committee chairman Brian Stanley of Sinn Féin, said: “The evidence would seem to point that they knew [the payments] were from RTÉ. I don’t know. We can’t speculate on this.” *

3. Seven untruths

On Tuesday, Tubridy outlined to the PAC “seven untruths” he believed had been told since the controversy erupted in June. When Bakhurst was asked if he agreed with the presenter that seven untruths had been told, he said he didn’t.

Bakhurst wasn’t brought through the alleged untruths one by one but was asked if he believed Tubridy had taken a 20 per cent pay cut, as stated by the presenter.

“He took a significant pay cut, that is undoubtedly true,” Bakhurst said. But figures could be used in different ways, and it depended on what you included, he added. “I don’t want to say he was not telling the truth.”

4. Were the Tubridy contract negotiations with RTÉ and the deal with Renault two separate agreements?

On Tuesday, Kelly repeatedly said the Tubridy contract with RTÉ was separate to the commercial agreement between RTÉ and the sponsor of The Late Late Show in relation to public appearances by Tubridy in return for payments of €75,000 per year. (The appearances deal was underwritten by RTÉ.)

“We believe that the substantive contract would not have been signed without the additional commercial agreement, or the underwriting,” Lynch told the committee in his opening statement on Thursday.

5. What’s the issue with the Breda O’Keeffe voluntary exit package?

During an appearance before the Oireachtas media committee last week, former RTÉ chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe, who left the post in early 2020, said she had availed of the voluntary exit package then in place.

During Thursday’s PAC meeting it was stated by the RTÉ witnesses that the exit agreement with O’Keeffe had not come before the station’s executive committee, as was required by the process. Bakhurst said he had been surprised when it emerged that O’Keeffe had availed of the voluntary package, and the matter was being investigated.

At one stage during the meeting Lynch said he had received a text message from O’Keeffe “disputing the claim that no one at the executive knew”, but independent deputy Verona Murphy took strong exception to someone trying to provide comment to the meeting via text messages, and Lynch wasn’t allowed to read out the text message.

O’Keeffe had been invited to attend the PAC meeting but did not take up the invitation. The exit deal for O’Keeffe, Bakhurst said, had been agreed between O’Keeffe and the then director general, Dee Forbes. Forbes, as director general, was the chair of the executive committee.

6. What’s the issue with Dave Fanning?

Labour Party TD Alan Kelly took strong exception to a recent tweet where a well-known RTÉ figure referred, in an obvious reference to the committee hearings, to the “nonsensical Oireachtas Nuremberg trial”. Bakhurst agreed it was not appropriate.

The tweet had been published the previous evening by Dave Fanning, the well-known broadcaster who is represented by Kelly’s agency, NK Management. Fanning quickly apologised on Twitter for his comment and deleted the tweet.

7. Is RTÉ going to continue to use the so-called barter account to pay for restaurant and hotel bills, flip flops and other purchases?

No.

8. When will Tubridy be back?

We still don’t know when, or if. Bakhurst said he had not spoken to Tubridy since the presenter’s appearances before the Oireachtas committees on Tuesday. He said he wanted to speak to people in radio, on his executive team and, possibly, Tubridy, before making any decision, and to do what was best for RTÉ and for the licence-fee payer.

Tubridy has not been paid in recent times, though an invoice seeking payment was received “a few days ago”. Tubridy still believes he is under contract with the station, but the station does not. When Tubridy decided to no longer present The Late Late Show, the old contract, it has argued, was breached, and a new one has not yet been finalised. It is because of this, Bakhurst said, that he could not say what rate of remuneration Tubridy was currently on.

Asked if the station had received any letters threatening legal action against it arising out of the Tubridy debacle, both Bakhurst and Lynch said no.

9. Can I answer the question please?

On a number of occasions the RTÉ witnesses insisted they be allowed answer questions that had been put to them. At one stage Bakhurst intervened when Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster was questioning, and interrupting, Lynch, and asked the chair that his colleague be allowed to respond to the very serious allegation that Lynch had misled the committee. When Lynch insisted he had not misled the committee, Munster interrupted, saying his response was “just waffle, that’s all it is”.

She said it was the opinion of the majority of members that he had misled the committee but Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe interrupted to say the members had not come to any decision on any issue yet “as we shouldn’t do that”.

*This article was amended on Friday, July 14th, 2023. A previous version of this article incorrectly described Richard Collins as “former” RTÉ chief financial officer. Mr Collins is and remains the chief financial officer of RTÉ.