Angry TDs have questioned why RTE effectively excused Director General Dee Forbes from attending Oireachtas committees by asking her to resign on June 16.
Chair of the RTE board Siun Ni Raghallaigh admitted the fact was not considered when the broadcaster asked for her resignation. The Oireachtas Media Committee heard that there was a “silo culture” in RTE where nothing was questioned if Ms Forbes signed off on it.
During a lengthy four-and-a-half-hour meeting yesterday afternoon, a number of high-level RTE executives denied having knowledge or being involved in the agreements put in place for Ryan Tubridy. Ms Forbes was not at the meeting due to poor health.
A statement published on Tuesday stated that “no member of the RTE Executive Board, other than the Director General, had all the necessary information in order to understand that the publicly declared figures for Tubridy could have been wrong”. In response to questions from Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin, Ms Ni Raghallaigh said that the RTE Board asked Ms Forbes to resign on June 16, nearly a week before the scandal came to light.
Read more: RTE points finger at former Director General Dee Forbes amid payments scandal
Ms Forbes did not resign and was suspended on June 21. She tendered her resignation on June 26.
Ms Ni Raghallaigh said: “When the Grant Thornton report was delivered to the Audit and Risk Committee, the Audit and Risk Committee made recommendations. One of those recommendations was to ask for her resignation. I did ask on Friday [June 16].”
Mr Griffin said that Ms Forbes would have been “an invaluable witness” and she is now no longer answerable to the Oireachtas. He asked: “Would you not have thought that we as an Oireachtas would want to investigate this and that the DG in situ will be someone who could give us some accountability?”
“We were told that her resignation was tendered last Monday. You accepted the resignation. Why did you accept the resignation?” Ms Ni Raghallaigh said that she stood over the decision to ask her to resign
when Mr Griffin told her she “knew well” the committee’s remit “only stretched so far”.
He said: “The people don’t matter to you. The fact that 10 weeks ago you were before our committee, asked a number of questions and you haven’t come back to us since then, that is how much regard you have for the Oireachtas, how much regard you have for the people.”
Ms Ni Raghallaigh later said she did not tell Media Minister Catherine Martin that Ms Forbes had been asked to resign.
It was confirmed last week that Mr Tubridy’s salary had been under-declared by €345,000 over five years.
Some €225,000 of this related to three €75,000 payments that were due to be paid by Renault but underwritten by RTE. Renault paid the first €75,000 but RTE had to pay the two years when they pulled out of the deal.
RTE’s Chief Financial Office Richard Collins told Sinn Fein ’s Imelda Munster that Mr Tubridy’s contract between 2015 and 2020 contained a provision for a “loyalty bonus”.
He said: “Basically in short, Ryan Tubridy was due a loyalty bonus at the end of this contract of €120,000.
“That was never paid, was never accrued for in the accounts. But for an unexplained reason, that €120,000 was credited against his earnings between 2017 and 2019. That’s under investigation. I didn’t sign off on it.”
When asked who signed off on it, Mr Collins said that it was the former CFO and Ms Forbes who did.
Interim Deputy Director General Adrian Lynch later added: “That was an end of contract payment, which was not in fact paid.
“The purpose of the review by Grant Thornton is to ascertain the facts as to why it was deducted from the published figures.
“This understatement only came to light during an internal review validating prior published earnings requested by the RTE board.”
Ms Ni Raghallaig also admitted that there is a cultural issue in RTE.
She said: “It is a culture that’s in there that accepts that, ‘well that’s approved by the DG so I’m not going to talk about it’.
“I think all of the people here know that that’s wrong. For the board and for me, I’m only there seven months, but for me, that was the shocking part of it as well, that there weren’t the conversations that we all needed to assume would happen.
“Like you said, it’s siloed, each of them in their own individual area, as you said.”
This was later repeated by Mr Lynch who said that “you can see that the relationship between the exec board members is quite siloed”. Mr Collins said that Deloitte came to him in “early March” raising concerns about their accounts and querying transactions made from the barter account. These were the two €75,000 payments made to Mr Tubridy.
RTE told the Committee when the issue was raised, it was not initially clear who the invoices related to.
Asked by Mr Griffin if there had been any contact with Mr Tubridy about the issue before March 16, Mr Collins replied: “I don’t know.”
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