RTÉ’s appearance at Oireachtas media committee ends
The main developments to come out of the meeting are:
- Ryan Tubridy has not repaid RTÉ the €150,000 he received for two promotional events that did not take place.
- Senior executives have strongly defended a TV advert for the newsroom, rejecting reports that props were brought in and that extras were hired in preference to journalists.
- The cost of producing the advert is less than €100,000, RTÉ has said, arguing there has been “inaccurate” reporting on its production.
- Committee chair Alan Kelly says the public think the advert is “bananas” and has “annoyed” a lot of people.
- Director general Kevin Bakhurst says that only two others in RTÉ earn more than his salary of €250,000, and both are legacy cases.
- Asked why he was not told earlier about the €3.6 million impairment on a partially abandoned ICT project, Mr Bakhurst has said it is a big organisation. “We are trying to clear the stables,” he has said.
Background to the €150,000 payment to Tubridy
Ryan Tubridy was paid €150,000 by RTÉ as part of a deal brokered by him, his agent Noel Kelly and RTÉ in 2020.
Mr Tubridy agreed to participate in a number of corporate events for Late Lat Show sponsor Renault in return for the payment.
It was at the centre of the scandal, which resulted in Mr Tubridy, RTÉ’s highest-paid presenter, leaving the broadcaster.
Under the deal, Mr Tubridy was to be be paid three payments of €75,000 in return for three public appearances.
The payments were nominally made by Renault but RTÉ effectively underwrote all three payments, totalling €225,000 and paid for them.
The existence of the payments were never made public until the issue was raised by the RTÉ board, and its new chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh, in the summer of 2023.
Mr Tubridy only fulfilled one of the three public engagements and told the Oireachtas media committee in 2023 that he would be willing to repay the balance of €150,000 if he returned to RTÉ.
However, some weeks later Mr Bakhurst announced that negotiations with Mr Tubridy had concluded and he would not be returning to the broadcaster.
Asked then, and later, should Mr Tubridy repay the €150,00, the director general said that on a legal basis, it might not be available to recuperate.
“Should Mr Kelly and Mr Tubridy decide to pay it back because it’s the right thing to do then we would welcome that,” he told the committee in 2023.
He later said there was a “moral” case for Mr Tubridy to repay the amount.
Jack Power reported in 2023 on the mechanism of the payments to Mr Tubridy and the cost of staging the only promotional event at the time.
Public think the RTÉ TV advert is ‘bananas’, says Alan Kelly
There is a lot of interest among committee members in relation to the TV advert highlighting the work of the newsroom.
The broadcaster’s head of news, Deirdre McCarthy, has again said there have been “factual inaccuracies and misinformation, and a lack of context” in media reporting of it.
She says the adverts look at the the daily working lives of three prominent journalists. One of them is RTÉ’s Europe editor, Tony Connelly.
Newsroom management decided that journalists would not be taken away from their daily duties to take part as extras in the advert, she has said. Therefore, extras had been hired but they had been shot out of focus and appeared blurred.
“A lot of the misinformation have come from a leak to the media of an internal editorial meeting last [week],” she has said.
Several members of the committee have asked if the group of extras used was more diverse and reflected a lack of diversity in the newsroom. Ms McCarthy rejected that assertion.
She said that the total cost of the advert was €77,000, plus VAT. Filming has not completed, she also said.
Chair Alan Kelly has said the advert has “annoyed a lot of people”.
He said that the general public think the advert is “bananas”, he says.
‘We have been trying to clean out the stable’
Kevin Bakhurst has been repeatedly asked by members of the committee, including Senator Alison Comyn (Fianna Fáil) and Joanna Byrne (Sinn Féin) if there is anything else that the public should know about in relation to RTÉ.
Mr Bakhurst said he would rather have been told about the €3.6 million impairment on the ICT project at an earlier juncture, but adds that it is a big organisation. He said the people involved in the ICT project felt it was correctly treated, properly accounted for and reported.
“We have been trying to clear out the stable and have done that as much as we can,” he said.
Asked whether he was confident nothing else is out there, he replied that he “can’t bring people into a room and interrogate them”.
Tubridy has not repaid RTÉ the €150,000 he received for Renault deal
Kevin Bakhurst has confirmed the former RTÉ broadcaster has not repaid two payments of €75,000 he received as part of the controversial Renault deal in 2020.
Mr Bakhurst has previously said that there was a “moral case” for Mr Tubridy to make the repayment.
When questioned by Pádraig O’Sullivan (Fianna Fáil) at committee, Mr Bakhurst confirmed Mr Tubridy, who now works as a broadcaster in London, has never made the repayments.
The two payments were made by means of a barter account, which essentially shielded the payments from public view.
Other matters
Some of the other matters that have been raised include RTÉ’s admission that it repaid €2.7 million in total (including fines) to Revenue for payments made under the Covid-era Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme to those who were not eligible.
There is also the matter of how RTÉ treated people working as contractors when they should have been treated as staff, which resulted in PRSI repayments.
Chairman Alan Kelly now asking questions
Alan Kelly has been pressing department officials on their knowledge of the 3.6 million impairment on a partially abandoned ICT project. He asks secretary general Feargal Ó Coigligh if the department with responsibility for media had “zero knowledge” of the €3.6 million impairment when it sat before the committee two years ago.
The department said it would have been aware of the references to the impairment in 2021 and again in 2022. Mr Ó Coigligh said in relation to the department reporting such an impairment, he said it would be very different today, and that the department has “strengthened our governance reporting”.
Joe Duffy comes up
Pádraig O’Sullivan (Fianna Fáil) refers to the imminent retirement of Joe Duffy from RTÉ Radio 1, who he says will be a big loss. He asks about those in RTÉ who are paid higher salaries. Mr Bakhurst replies that from now on, nobody in RTÉ will earn more than the director general.
Return to the ICT project
The €3.6 million impairment on an ICT project that was partially abandoned is being discussed again, with both Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Sinn Féin) and Senator Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) asking RTÉ executives about how it was treated in its reporting.
The impairment was brought to the attention of Minister Patrick O’Donovan only this year. Although the funds lost were included in successive annual accounts, it happened over a period of several years, and would have required close reading to see its full extent.
Asked by Mr Ahearn if she would do it differently, chief financial officer Mari Hurley said that as a public body, it was very conscious it needed to have a culture of openness and transparency. She said that approach would be evidenced in its annual report later this year, which would show that all the recommendations made by the inquiry into the impairment have been adopted.
The RTÉ newsroom advert
Peter “Chap” Cleere (Fianna Fáil) raises the sensitive question of the advert for the RTÉ newsroom that has led to a lot of controversy, and a strong response from RTÉ to some of it.
Mr Bakhurst tackles this head-on, and it is clear the broadcaster has been very unhappy at some of the coverage.
“A lot of the press coverage has been totally inaccurate,” he argues.
He says that some coverage alleged that props were taken into the newsroom to make it look good in advance of the shoot. He said the only props that were brought in were two plants that were moved in from elsewhere in the building. No other props were used.
As to the reporting of “extras” being brought in to act as journalists, he said that the marketing department had asked editors in the newsroom if some journalists from the newsroom could sit in the background while the filming was taking place.
He said that process would take several hours and the management in the newsroom correctly said no, that it would be diverting journalists away from their work. For that reason, extras were brought in to sit in the background. Their identities were blurred.
Mr Bakhurst was asked how much this cost. He did not have the figures for how much the extras were paid, but said the advert “cost less than €100,000″ to make.
Parity between Raidió na Gaeltachta and RTÉ journalists
Sinéad Gibney (Social Democrats) highlights the pay disparity of €16,000 between senior producers in the Irish-speaking radio station and their counterparts in RTÉ.
Mr Bakhurst said they have been put on an equivalent scale to those based in RTÉ radio and news, which will give them “headroom” to increase their pay in tandem with RTÉ. Ms Gibney says they should have been given salary increases equivalent to their experience, rather than being placed at what she implied were lower levels on the RTÉ pay scale.
Mr Bakhurst has said that 328 employees in RTÉ have applied for the voluntary redundancy process.
Kevin Bakhurst addresses the €3.6m impairment on RTÉ’s ICT project
The director general is now answering questions being put by Malcolm Byrne of Fianna Fáil. He says the broadcaster’s audit and risk committee was aware in 2023 about the issue, and that write-offs were included in RTÉ accounts. He added that the amount was written off over a period of several years.
First clashes of the day
Slightly testy exchanges between Joanna Byrne (Sinn Féin) and Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) and the director general.
Mr Bakhurst argues that RTÉ has been forthcoming. He said the new RTÉ chief financial officer wanted to tidy up a few other matters that came to attention. RTÉ could have kept them until its annual accounts, but included them all in the opening statement.
He also takes issues with Mr Carrigy, who opens his questions by saying it’s like groundhog day, and RTÉ is in again, despite so many appearances in the previous Dáil.
Mr Bakhurst reminds Mr Carrigy they had asked him to resign in a previous appearance. He argues that “nothing was hidden here” in relation to the ICT impairment of €3.6 million, unlike the scandal around Ryan Tubridy’s secret payments.
“The 2023 scandal was about things being done deliberately to mislead the public, about sums of money being spent and being covered up.
“This [ICT project] was reported to New Era [which has an overview role with RTÉ], which said ‘ they were correctly accounted for and correctly reported’.”
More details on breakdown on ICT system
From Kevin Bakhurst’s opening statement: “The new system kicked off in 2016. It was a large-scale but essential capital project that was probably too ambitious and ultimately didn’t achieve all that was originally hoped. It is extremely regrettable when dealing with public funds to have to write down significant sums of money.
“Despite what some of the commentary may imply, the various systems and project management standards in place in RTÉ have proven effective in ensuring that the correct outcomes are achieved.”
The meeting of the committee has just started with chairman Alan Kelly running through the list of RTÉ witnesses.
It has taken many months for the Oireachtas committees to be set up, but today sees one of the first meaningful engagements by a committee inquiring into an area of public interest.
RTÉ’s management team, led by director general Kevin Bakhurst, is before the Committee on the Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport, and will be quizzed on a number of recent controversies.
They include a €3.7 million write-down on a partially abandoned IT project at RTÉ to replace its legacy finance and human resources system.
The broadcaster said at the time that the impairments were noted in its annual accounts during the years 2020 to 2023. However, they only came to public attention when the broadcaster made a disclosure to Minister for Media and Culture Patrick O’Donovan earlier this year.
Mr Bakhurst’s opening statement will also disclose that RTÉ handed over more than €4 million in unpaid social welfare contributions related to the misclassification of some workers in the organisation as self-employed contractors.
Ian Curran reports in The Irish Times on Mr Bakhurst’s opening statement. It is expected to say that RTÉ has made payments of €1.1 million to the Revenue Commissioners to date relating to an audit of its finances that began last year.
In the appendix to his remarks submitted in advance of today’s meeting, RTÉ noted a €3.2 million settlement to the Department of Social Protection relating to its review of some 655 alleged cases of Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) misclassification at the broadcaster.
The committee, chaired by Alan Kelly of the Labour Party, will also question the RTÉ executives on a number of other issues including a proposed TV advert for the newsroom that has been the subject of some criticism.
