RTÉ’s darkest week: Crisis around Ryan Tubridy’s hidden payments sends ripples far beyond Dublin 4

Following the bombshell revelations of June 22nd that Ryan Tubridy’s pay had been misstated by €345,000, RTÉ faced a make-or-break week. As the days ticked by, the situation dramatically unravelled for the national broadcaster, which now finds itself at the centre of a storm that threatens to overwhelm it.

What transpired in the broadcaster’s darkest week, and is there a way back?

Monday

At 7.20am on Monday, an email from a PR firm representing the then RTÉ director general Dee Forbes landed, announcing her resignation with immediate effect. Forbes was meticulous in her words: she accepted that she was ultimately responsible for what happened within RTÉ but was careful to point out that she went against no advice, and that the Tubridy deal was struck “following detailed discussions” with colleagues.

For Forbes, resignation was an abrupt end to a troubled tenure marred by financial strife, strategic blunder and fatal misjudgments relating to Tubridy’s pay. But her exit, weeks before handing over the reins to Kevin Bakhurst, had the air of inevitability. She seemed without allies when the end came, saying RTÉ’s board had not treated her with fairness, equity or respect.

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The manner of Forbes’ resignation was political dynamite. As an ex-employee, the formal and informal power of the Oireachtas media committee and the Public Accounts Committee was greatly diminished. Still, the media committee put her on a list of witnesses it sought at a meeting behind closed doors.

It was the same story at PAC, where one member spoke of “significant frustration” about the resignation. The PAC armed itself with expanded powers giving it a freer rein to pursue financial matters. This was important: the legacy of the committee’s hearings with Angela Kerins still looms large, and members didn’t want to face post-facto accusations of straying beyond their brief. Kerins, the former Rehab chief executive, won a challenge in the courts that the PAC acted unlawfully in its treatment of her when they subjected her to questioning at two hearings in 2014.

It was clear the committees intended to sink their teeth into the broadcaster. However, at senior leadership level, the tone was more measured. There was, at the top of Government, a hope that a common cause could be established between the politicians and the broadcaster – that a floor could be put under the scandal. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was measured in his tone on the fringes of the Government’s forum on international security.

The day was punctuated by RTÉ stars disclosing their pay and confirming they received no side payments, a minor reprieve for the broadcaster that at least removed a potential avenue for deepening the crisis further.

Tuesday

In Montrose, emotions ran high at Tuesday’s protest by staff, and morale was said to be “around the ankles”.

The gathering of about 200 workers, which included many of the broadcaster’s prominent journalists along with staff from other sections across the organisation, was a human resources department’s worst nightmare.

Anger spilt out as RTÉ news reporters Orla O’Donnell, Paul Cunningham and Sinéad Hussey articulated grievances that had been festering for a very long time.

[ ‘We are told there’s no money and then we hear this is going on’: RTÉ staff protest pay scandal ]

RTÉ itself was by now promising to issue a “comprehensive statement” as the payments scandal continued, with indications in the morning that the statement could be expected after lunchtime, towards 3pm.

There were clear invocations from the political system to use the statement to fully embrace a sense of responsibility. Speaking after the Cabinet met, Minister for Media Catherine Martin implored the broadcaster not to “squander” the opportunity. Both Taoiseach and Tánaiste urged the executives to come clean.

When the statement finally dropped shortly just before 6pm there was an immediate backlash. One senior political source’s verdict was that it was “not credible” and “too convenient”, with pages dedicated to how the executive team knew bits of the deal but only Forbes had the whole picture.

Politicians and observers outside RTÉ didn’t like what they saw; it was a flawed strategy which misjudged the room. On Tuesday night, senior figures in RTÉ struggled to understand the poor reception.

“They had a chance to build up a bit of credibility,” a Coalition source said. Another senior source judged that RTÉ was in a “desperately dangerous” situation. There was more than enough blame to go around.

Wednesday

Citing medical reasons, Forbes spurned invitations to attend a Wednesday hearing of the Oireachtas media committee and a Thursday session of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee.

TDs and Senators lined up to call into question the organisation’s claims that only Forbes knew years of public declarations about Tubridy pay were wrong.

Bit by bit, details began to emerge. RTÉ’s chief financial officer, Richard Collins, disclosed that auditors Deloitte first flagged concerns in early March, and that they sought an explanation about the transactions from him then.

He went to Forbes, whose explanation was judged unsatisfactory, leading the matter to be referred to the board. RTÉ chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh made the shock disclosure that she had asked Forbes to resign just before the report was made public, which Forbes had not done, leading to her suspension – a fact RTÉ refused to acknowledge when the scandal first broke.

Ní Raghallaigh had neglected to mention this most obviously salient sequence to Martin, the media Minister, when the pair met the previous Saturday. It was a stunning revelation, hinting at a flawed understanding of the broadcaster’s need to disclose matters to their political masters. The chair later apologised to the Minister.

At the committee, Ní Raghallaigh accepted that the broadcaster’s culture was too deferential to the director general (DG), minutes after executives had offered lengthy explanations about the comfort they drew in relation to the transactions arising from the DG’s involvement in them.

A spat erupted over the exact status of Tubridy’s contract, with RTÉ saying his TV and radio contract had come to an end, and negotiations for a new radio only contract had been paused, leaving him in a sort of limbo, although sources close to Tubridy asserted that he does not accept the contract had come to an end.

Details emerged about how some contractors at RTÉ could accept free cars as brand ambassadors. Executives doubled down on the centrality of Forbes to events, emphasising her verbal commitment that RTÉ would underwrite the commercial arrangement with Renault as a key and fatal point of departure for the deal, with the nature of the invoices supporting later payments under this contract “concealed”.

Again, the verdict from the political system was swift: if RTÉ had hoped to start pulling out of its dramatic nosedive on Wednesday, those hopes were dashed. Catherine Martin said the appearance had “not calmed considerable disquiet”.

RTÉ under fire at the Public Accounts Committee

Listen | 24:21

On Wednesday RTÉ's first of two appearances before a Dáil committee did not quell the scandal enveloping the organisation. On Thursday they were back. What went down? Did the broadcaster's top brass finally manage to provide more answers than raise new questions? Bernice Harrison and Jennifer Bray listen back.Correction: in this episode, remarks made in the Public Accounts Committee by Colm Burke TD were incorrectly attributed to Colm Brophy TD.

Thursday

By Thursday, when it sat, PAC was unshackled.

RTÉ struck a different tone at first: the broadcaster’s interim deputy director general, Adrian Lynch, held out the prospect of a meaningful structural overhaul of the broadcaster’s executive board – RTÉ’s top management – and conceded collective responsibility for what had happened. Ní Raghallaigh laid down her strongest verdict on the transactions to date, saying it appeared they were “designed to deceive”. She promised to consign the term “talent” to the dustbin.

After saying on Wednesday that RTÉ was guilty of “shocking” governance failings, the chairwoman’s remarks summed up the dysfunction at the heart of the verbal agreement Forbes made to guarantee the €75,000 annual payment that Tubridy received on top of pay that was already the highest in RTÉ.

RTÉ’s second committee appearance, in short, was carnage.

RTÉ chief financial officer Richard Collins said Forbes claimed to him that special Tubridy payments were fees to his agent Noel Kelly for giving RTÉ Covid-era advice on “how we dealt with sponsors”.

It was a striking claim, prompting questions as to why Collins didn’t challenge Forbes. Sinn Féin TD John Brady accused him of being no more than a “messenger boy” between the director general and RTÉ’s auditors Deloitte.

Brady pressed Collins to disclose his own pay to the PAC and reacted with incredulity when he said he didn’t know it, saying he was a chief financial officer “who doesn’t know his own salary”. Collins then reluctantly revealed his €200,000 pay and €25,000 car allowance, first struggling to remember what they were. Of the circuitous arrangements made for the Tubridy payments, Collins said: “My own opinion is maybe the taxpayer was defrauded.”

Bad as that was for RTÉ, Collins went on to reveal the controversial “barter” account used to channel money to Tubridy was used to fund corporate hospitality for advertisers at a time when RTÉ was in financial crisis. The expenditure included €110,000 on travel and hotels to the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, 10-year IRFU season tickets at the cost of €138,000 and Champions League final tickets costing €26,000. In addition, RTÉ commercial director Geraldine O’Leary brought clients to a U2 concert – saying her husband “probably” came with her – while a bus was provided to take guests from a Drumcondra restaurant to Croke Park, only a short distance away.

The extravagant client perks paid for through the same barter account used to funnel secret payments to Tubridy dramatically escalated matters, deepening the crisis of oversight failures at RTÉ well beyond the many unexplained issues around how it concealed the full extent of its star presenter’s pay.

The capacity of the controversy to shoot off in new directions was on show again on Thursday. Lynch twice conceded that there was a “possibility” Tubridy could have known of looming troubled before he left The Late Late Show.

Tubridy has denied it, but his March 16th departure from The Late Late Show is being linked to the uncovering of the hidden payments. Deloitte raised audit problems with Collins on March 7th and he went to Forbes on March 8th.

That RTÉ neglected to reveal such information when saying the audit issue first came to light in “late March” and was taken to the audit and risk committee of the RTÉ board on St Patrick’s Day was in keeping with the drip-feed of disclosure in the organisation’s chaotic response to the debacle.

Tubridy has insisted the impending revelations had no bearing on his decision to quit RTÉ’s flagship brand, but both he and his agent did not respond to a query on when he found out questions were being asked.

The committee hearings are painful for staff in Montrose.

“There has been an element of catharsis about this week,” says Emma O Kelly of RTÉ’s NUJ chapel, “because for the first time people have stood up and spoken out about what have been issues only privately discussed in groups of people or in WhatsApp groups.

“A lot of people in RTÉ believe they have been treated with disdain by management for a very long time and though we all realise we are only at the start of something here, there is a very strong feeling that that at least has to end with this.”

In the wake of the committee hearings, “there is no longer a relationship of trust with the senior executives”, said one staff member.

“The ‘act designed to deceive’ comment by Siún Ní Raghallaigh was welcome,” says O Kelly who describes much else of what came out over the two days, particularly Thursday, as “grubby” and in some instances “disgusting”.

“People use the word sickening to me,” she said.

Among her colleagues, the general sense is that the committee hearings were required but damaging not just to RTÉ’s managers but also to the wider organisation and might ultimately play a part in creating a major funding crisis.

Still, there is what seems to be a widely held concern that there will be more than enough public anger to go around, especially if politicians feel there is mileage in stretching their scrutiny into weekly public instalments.

The alternative, it is suggested, is for the external review being finalised by Catherine Martin to be robust enough to allow inquiries take place away from the public gaze now for a period.

“It just might be possible to put the whole thing on a new footing,” said one RTÉ staff member.

[ RTÉ payments controversy: Who did what and when? ]

Friday

As the week drew to a close, the controversy showed no signs of letting up. The Oireachtas media committee looked set to invite both Tubridy and Noel Kelly before it, while the Taoiseach, hinting that the controversy could be moving in an altogether more serious direction, suggested accounting rules and company law may have been breached at the station. RTÉ’s chief financial officer, Richard Collins, told the Dáil PAC on Thursday that there had been “concealment and deception” and that “maybe the taxpayer was defrauded”.

Varadkar also said that in future RTÉ may have to account differently for its public funds and its commercial revenues, suggesting a deep reorganisation of the broadcaster may be on the cards.

He said the Government would proceed with the appointment of “someone who understands corporate governance, understands accounting, understands how organisations should be run and should not be run” to examine the situation at RTÉ and “put things right”, understood to be Prof Niamh Brennan from UCD.

Asked if an authorised officer could be appointed under the Companies Acts, Mr Varadkar said: “We haven’t decided exactly which legal mechanism will be used. So there is an option under the Act for the Minister to appoint a designated person and at least earlier in the week it wasn’t planned to do that but I think the Minister is still reserving her judgment on that and it remains an option,” he said.

Only one certainty persists in this drama: it is far from over, and RTÉ has many miles to travel before redemption.