RTÉ’s Leinster House hearing shows profound challenge facing broadcaster over pay crisis

As RTÉ struggles to contain fallout from the crisis around the hidden payments to its highest earner, Ryan Tubridy, a fractious committee hearing in Leinster House shows the national broadcaster has mountains still to climb before it can regain public confidence.

In a four-hour grilling before the Oireachtas arts and media committee, only a limited amount of new information came to light about the disastrous sequence of events that has led RTÉ into its biggest crisis for decades. As the affair enters its second week, the sense that the organisation is facing a profound challenge was palpable.

“It is shocking. This is just a complete lapse of governance,” said RTÉ chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh, noting she has come to lack confidence in the culture at Montrose.

That can be no surprise. The affair has claimed the head of RTÉ's top executive, director general (DG) Dee Forbes. Tubridy’s early return to the airwaves seems increasingly unlikely. A wide-ranging Government review of RTÉ is set to prolong public scrutiny of the organisation for many months to come.

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As a lunchtime hearing continued into the evening, politicians lined up to angrily call into question RTÉ’s claims that only Forbes knew years of public declarations about Tubridy’s pay were wrong.

[ Ryan Tubridy rejects RTÉ’s claim he is out of contract as pay controversy deepens ]

[ ‘Not tenable’ for Tubridy to return to air amid ongoing controversy, RTÉ acting DG says ]

RTÉ witnesses held the line on that. But Ní Raghallaigh was quick to argue that a “siloed” structure within the organisation meant conversations assumed to take place between senior executives did not in fact happen – with catastrophic consequences.

“I accept we have very much a cultural issue within the organisation and you can see this is why we’re here,” the chairwoman told TDs and Senators.

“It’s a culture that’s in there that accepts ‘well that’s approved by the DG so I’m not going to talk about it’ – and I think all of the people that are here now would agree that’s wrong.”

This prompted inevitable questions as to why RTÉ never said Forbes was suspended last Wednesday when it made a statement on Thursday that set crisis in motion. The suspension was revealed only on Friday as the turmoil escalated. It has been escalating ever since.

“We couldn’t say she was suspended because of labour laws. However, we took the decision that we would take that on board and make it public that she was suspended because the damage that was being done to the organisation outweighed whatever the risk was of saying that publicly,” Ní Raghallaigh said.

It might well have been argued that there would be no avoiding disclosure of the suspension once the affair burst into the open but that is only one of the questions that linger about the organisation’s response.

Fresh questions were raised too about RTÉ's assertion last Thursday that Tubridy’s earnings in the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 had been “understated” by €120,000 in annual declarations on the pay of the top-10 presenters. That €120,000 was a rather large part in the overall statement that Tubridy’s pay in 2017 to 2022 had been underreported by a total of €345,000.

The 2017-2019 period was excluded from RTÉ's “comprehensive” statement on the affair on Tuesday because it remains under examination by forensic accountants at Grant Thornton.

Before the committee, however, RTÉ chief financial officer Richard Collins said the €120,000 in question was the same €120,000 exit fee that Tubridy was supposed to receive at the end of his 2015 contract in 2020 but didn’t in fact receive because of pressure to cut costs.

“There was no €120,000 payment,” Collins said. “This was an adjustment that was made to the figures. Basically in short, Ryan Tubridy was due a loyalty bonus at the end of his contract: €120,000. That was never paid, that was never accrued for in the accounts,” he added.

[ RTÉ payments controversy: Executives tell Oireachtas committee of ‘cultural issue’ and say it will publish Kielty deal if he agrees ]

[ RTÉ fails to quell political disquiet over Tubridy pay ]

“But for an unexplained reason, that €120,000 was credited against his earnings between 2017 and 2019. That’s under investigation at the moment.”

Little enough is clear on this front. Still, the implication is that RTÉ believes money credited against Tubridy earnings in those years – but never in fact paid – should still have been declared publicly in the top-10 list.

This seems like one obvious point for interrogation when RTÉ returns to Leinster House for questioning at the Dáil committee of public accounts.

In the backdrop are rumblings about conflict between Tubridy and RTÉ over his contract. The presenter is disputing his employer’s claims that arrangement came to an end once he stood down from The Late Late Show in March.

That is another avenue for interrogation by the Dáil Public Accounts Committee on Thursday when RTÉ board members and executives make their second public appearance before a parliamentary committee about this controversy in as many days.