RTÉ controversy: Failure of key figures to face questions is a ‘farce’, committee head says

It is “a farce” that some of the key people involved in Toy Show The Musical were “unavailable” and would not be in the room for today’s committee meeting, the head of the Oireachtas media committee has said.

Niamh Smyth was speaking on Newstalk Breakfast and RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland. She said it was “not sustainable” for former director general of RTÉ Dee Forbes to continue providing “sick notes” when invited to appear before the committee.

Ms Forbes, who presided over RTÉ during many of the issues that have arisen in recent months, has on medical advice not accepted invitations to attend media or public accounts committee meetings.

Senior figures from RTÉ have been invited back before the committee in the wake of the Grant Thornton report on the loss-making Toy Show the Musical and the separate McCann Fitzgerald report voluntary exit scheme payments at the broadcaster.

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Members would be looking at the committee’s ability to compel witnesses to attend meetings, as it was no longer “acceptable” that the “key people” were not in the room to explain the reasoning behind the “vanity project”, Ms Smyth said.

The Oireachtas media committee had a responsibility to the public and to the staff of RTÉ to ensure there was full accountability of how State funds were spent, she said.

On Tuesday RTÉ published an updated version of Grant Thornton’s report on the controversial musical, revealing the names of the majority of the senior figures interviewed, who were anonymised in the original version.

RTÉ's former director of strategy Rory Coveney claimed it would have been “unthinkable” to pull the broadcaster’s Toy Show the Musical production in the weeks after it launched, due to poor ticket sales.

Today’s media committee will focus on two major issues, she said – the report on Toy Show the Musical and the exit packages given to some executive members of the organisation. Ms Smyth said it appeared that the Toy Show Musical project had been ratified without consensus from within the board of RTÉ.

Board members had an obligation to “interrogate” the project and the money being spent on it, he said.

The updated version of Grant Thornton’s report on the controversial musical found the board of RTÉ was not formally told about the production until after a contract had already been signed with the Convention Centre Dublin to host the musical, at significant cost.

“So I do take the point where board members did feel that there was no going back on this. “I do accept that it was difficult for the members to challenge these concerns they had. But I don’t think it really faces up to the responsibility of the board members who were there,” Ms Smyth said.

The Toy Show the Musical production, which ran for several weeks from December 2022, only sold 11,044 tickets despite early internal projections it could reach audiences of more than 100,000 people, resulting in a loss of €2.3 million.

Kevin Bakhurst will pledge that “RTÉ will once again become an organisation the country can be proud of” when he appears before the Oireachtas Committee on Media today.

The chairwoman of RTÉ's board Siún Ní Raghallaigh will also appear before TDs and Senators.

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