The board of RTÉ is to be reconfigured in the wake of the Ryan Tubridy payment scandal.
Speaking before the Public Accounts Committee, board chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh said, “It appears to me that this was an act designed to deceive.”
“As a trained accountant and a former financial controller, I am appalled as to how payments were recorded and presented in the RTÉ accounts,” she said.
Expressing RTÉ’s ‘commitment to rebuild trust’ she welcomed the roll “the PAC has now been afforded to examine expenditure of RTÉ,” promising to work closely with the committee.
Ní Raghallaigh also said she intends to publish the list of RTÉ top 100 earners as soon as possible.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Forbes, Tubridy, and Kelly should ‘give their side’ of the story
“There are other people who could shine a light on this and they include Ryan Tubridy, they include his agent, and they include Dee Forbes. And I think they should be willing to come before the committee and answer questions,”
“There are procedures and they will be treated fairly and I think that it would be the right thing for them to do their part. They may have a story to tell and I think it’s right that they should be allowed to tell their side of the story,”
“The fact that they would not, or that they would refuse, would be a matter of concern to me,” Varadkar said.
CFO Richard Collins claimed that he had become aware of the payments made to Ryan Tubridy on the 7th of March last after being approached by auditors from Deloitte.
Questioned by Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster he said he had directed the concerns raised by Deloitte to Dee Forbes who said the money was consultancy invoices relating to fees for Tubridy’s agent Noel Kelly Management,.
Collins said he has received a “high level response” from Forbes but that this had not been satisfactory to the auditors insisting that he ‘did not give the nod’ in relation to the payments.
In a statement which was submitted to the committee Deputy Director General Adrian Lynch expressed “deep regret regarding what has emerged in recent days” calling the events a “serious breach of trust with the public”.
Lynch said he understands that the initial task of incoming Director General Kevin Bakhurst who will start work on the 10th of July will be a reconstitution of the Executive Board of RTÉ.
While saying he had no personal knowledge of the payments made to Tubridy Lynch said,
“It is a fact that the application of governance procedures at executive board level allowed for the partial and incomplete sharing of information, so that individual members of the executive either did not have access to information, or had information withheld from them,” he said.
“It is true that the Executive Board failed in its responsibility to act as a collective, and failed to ensure good governance in this matter.”
“Collectively, owing to the siloed style of procedures at Executive, and an overreliance on the prerogative asserted by the Director-General, we did not receive a comprehensive evaluation of Ryan Tubridy’s contract in full, including the way in which the payments were treated.”
“We acknowledge and accept this failure by those members of the Executive who were aware of the contract.” he said