A TD has hit out at Ryan Tubridy being featured on the front of the RTÉ Guide this week, claiming that the move is “arrogance on steroids from RTÉ” in the wake of the payments scandal.
Mr Tubridy, who now lives in the UK and is to start a new role with Times Radio, exited the State broadcaster after the secret payments scandal crisis blew up in June 2023. Two separate payments totalling €150,000 had been paid to the presenter the following year, prompting a review by Grant Thornton. He was paid the sum as part of a deal brokered by him, his agent Noel Kelly and RTÉ in 2020.
He was to be paid a total of €225,000 over three years by the broadcaster as part of a deal to top up his salary, which was not disclosed by RTÉ.
In a post on Tuesday, the RTÉ Guide plugged Tubridy’s new cover, writing: “As he returns to Irish telly on The Assembly, Ryan Tubridy talks to us this week about how family, friends and therapy kept him going and why he’d be open to returning to the national broadcaster.”
“I wouldn’t burn any bridges anywhere,” Tubridy told the weekly newspaper. “In recent times, I was asked to do a few TV things for RTE, independent commissions, but they weren’t the right project or the right time.”
Offaly TD Carol Nolan told Gript: “Do RTE executives take some kind of masochistic pleasure in rubbing salt into the wounds, when it comes to the beleaguered Irish taxpayers that are forced to fund its largesse under threat of imprisonment?
“It certainly seems that way. Out goes the disingenuous sack cloth and ashes routine performed for the Oireachtas Committee and it returns the emperor’s new clothes like a nauseating re-run of some badly acted tragi-comedy in which RTE assigns the taxpayer the role of the fool. This is arrogance on steroids from RTE,” the TD said.
‘PEOPLE ARE JUST SICK OF BEING TAKEN FOR FOOLS’
“In all seriousness, this issue speaks to a governance culture that is remote from accountability, lacking in judgement, and profoundly disrespectful. RTE must learn that it cannot simply return to form as it were after a suitable period of faux humility. People are just sick of being taken for fools. RTE does not have a divine right to hundreds of millions of taxpayer funding. It’s high time it realised that,” the Independent politician added.
Referring to Director-General of RTÉ, Kevin Bankhurst, Tubridy says in the interview: “I had coffee with Kevin this summer. I always got on well with him. I sometimes think that his hand was a little bit forced although he might say otherwise. And we agreed to disagree about the end-end.”
“I can see myself doing business with RTÉ again,” Tubridy said as part of the interview that has been perceived by some as a possible attempt to bring the presenter back at some point.
When asked about the payments scandal, he said: “The media were relentless in their pursuit of me, ‘Johnny Chatshow’ pitched as the problem for the whole of the RTÉ organisation. They stopped thinking about the fact that I had a mother, or a family or people who would be upset by their coverage.
“They might say, well it was all your fault and so on. But my mother protected her son, my family protected their brother, and my girls [daughters Ella and Julia, from his first marriage to Anne Marie Power] protected their father.”
“I was seeing a therapist for about six months before the RTÉ thing,” he added. “I was hitting 50 and I wanted to get my mind in order as I was heading towards a decision regarding The Late Late Show. I met this terrific therapist, and we clicked, so by the time the fan was hit by the excrement, I had somewhere to go to ask what the hell is happening. That helped enormously.”
At the time of his departure, Mr Tubridy was RTÉ’s highest-paid presenter, on an annual salary of €555,000. The payments were only made public when the issue was raised by the RTÉ board, and its new chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh in the summer of 2023.
That same year, Mr Tubridy told the Oireachtas media committee that he would be willing to repay the balance of €150,000 if he returned to RTÉ. However, after negotiations, it was revealed he would not be returning to the broadcaster. Mr Bankhurst was asked if Mr Tubridy should repay the €150,000, to which the director general responded that on a legal basis, it might not be available to recuperate.
Mr Bankhurst said before the committee: “Should Mr Kelly and Mr Tubridy decide to pay it back because it’s the right thing to do then we would welcome that,” adding later that there was a “moral” case for Mr Tubridy to repay the amount.
Tubridy had his own show on Virgin Radio for two years, but is now working on a number of new projects, including a YouTube series, as reported by RTE. It was announced on Wednesday that he will also be joining Times Radio’s weekend lineup.