RTÉ is facing a torrent of inquiries about its financial dealings this week as politicians seek answers about the payments scandal that has engulfed the broadcaster since last week.
The three party leaders will discuss the RTÉ situation at their weekly meeting this evening before the Minister for Arts and Media, Catherine Martin, briefs her Cabinet colleagues on Tuesday, when she is expected to give details of an external review of corporate governance and culture at the station.
On Wednesday, RTÉ executives will face the first of two Oireachtas committees who are investigating the scandal, when they appear at the Arts and Media Committee followed by the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday.
It is expected that both committees will seek an explanation from RTÉ representatives this week on the apparent discrepancy between the €230k paid to a British media consultancy by RTÉ and the €150k received by Ryan Tubridy in salary top-ups for 2021 and 2022. The British company, Astus, arranges for companies to pay for part of their advertising bills through supplying goods or services.
The committees will also seek to establish if the practice of paying salary top-ups was used by the broadcaster in the past. RTÉ said last week that none of its 10 best-paid presenters were in receipt of any top-ups but sources confirmed yesterday that this referred to the situation at present. RTÉ is currently finalising terms of reference for an examination of payments to stars that may include a review to ascertain if the practice was ever used in the past.
RTÉ said that it would respond to formal invitations from the Oireachtas Media Committee and the Public Accounts Committee but a range of senior figures at the station are expected to appear before the committees.
It is not clear if the outgoing director general, Dee Forbes, who was suspended by the board last week when the scandal came to light, will appear. Requests for a comment to Ms Forbes met with no response.
Politicians from all parties say they are furious at having been misled by RTÉ executives when they issued incorrect details of Mr Tubridy’s pay in the past. The broadcaster has been in turmoil since revelations last week that it paid Mr Tubridy undeclared top-ups of €345,000 in addition to his reported salary since 2017.
It meant that details supplied by RTÉ to the Oireachtas, the Government and the public of its top level pay – at a time when it has been lobbying fiercely for additional public funding – were incorrect.
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Mr Tubridy will not present his radio show on Monday morning, having been told last week by RTÉ management that he was being kept off the air for editorial reasons. It is understood that a decision about whether he will return next week will be made by station executives in the coming days.
“Our members are angry. They feel conned and misled,” said Niamh Smyth, the Fianna Fáil TD who chairs the Oireachtas media committee.
Labour TD Alan Kelly, who sits on the Public Accounts Committee, said that the Director of Corporate Enforcement should be called in to examine “unorthodox accounting practices”.
Some of the Oireachtas committee inquiries are expected to revolve around the “barter account” which was used to pay some of the top-ups to Mr Tubridy.
The broadcaster said yesterday that its chief financial officer did not have oversight of the account but did have access to it when compiling the annual financial accounts for the years 2020 to 2022, when the controversial transactions were recorded as a “year-end adjustment”. The transactions were not recorded in the station’s monthly management accounts, it said.
Two payments of €75,000 each, in relation to 2021 and 2022, were paid to the presenter’s agent Noel Kelly by way of the barter account linked to a system through which the station used advertising space to pay for certain goods and services.
The Oireachtas committees are also likely to probe the role of Mr Kelly, who also represents many of the other top earning presenters in RTÉ.
