Yesterday it was revealed that RTÉ’s highest earning host Ryan Tubridy was paid €345,000 more than our dear national broadcaster declared to us or to the Oireachtas.
RTÉ has acknowledged the deep breach in public trust that this has caused, but as a daily, albeit reluctant, consumer of their news, one wonders how robust that trust was to begin with?
This “very damaging” revelation just adds insult to injury when it seems like some of the very people who lecture us day and night about how we should think were apparently involved in playing with our tax money.
All the while RTÉ routinely threatens people with jail unless they pay a mandatory licence fee to finance content that many of us do not value, agree with, or even watch.
To most people €345,000 is a lot of money which makes it difficult to imagine how this sum was transferred over 5 years unnoticed by RTÉ or Tubridy.
I don’t know about you, but if tens of thousands of euro kept popping up in my account I think I’d notice.
Last March, Tubridy announced that he would be stepping down from the Late Late Show but when asked yesterday if this was connected to the payment scandal, RTÉ Board Chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh answered, “Not at all.”
This seems curious as it would appear that details of the ‘secret salary’ began to give off smoke around that time.
Ní Raghallaigh, who was appointed to the board last November, said that no board members were aware of the financial arrangements and when asked who signed off on them answered, “That’s not something we can talk about at this point,”
She did however give assurances that those responsible will be held accountable.
It’s really difficult to believe that those involved were not aware of what was going on, and since Tubridy does not appear to have made any effort to correct the inaccurate payment statements made by RTÉ one wonders how he can pass for ‘the voice of the nation’?
All he’s said so far is that he’s ‘disappointed to be at the centre of this story,’ which kind of sounds like a statement Dr.Phil wouldn’t be too impressed with.
John McGuirk pointed out a very interesting headline from 2019 which said that Ryan Tubridy was “haunted by children in poverty”- this was about two years into his off record pay deal mind you.
That headline was connected with an announcement that ‘Tubs’ would be accepting a substantial pay cut (yeah not really though) of 40% which he reportedly became aware of at a St Vincent de Paul Christmas Appeal launch.
Tubridy said he found it “depressing” that 4,000 children were living in hotel rooms and not having proper desks to do their homework on while recalling his own “lovely childhood”.
Independent TD Michael McNamara has called for the TV licence to be scrapped along with the RTÉ board.
Over the last 12 months in particular, almost every time this writer has tuned into RTÉ broadcasts a substantial amount of their reporting seems to focus on official Ireland’s frenzied search for the ‘far right’, messages from Volodymyr Zelensky, and of course issues related to the new national religion of LGBTQ-etc.
I think it’s fair to say that RTÉ has long since forgotten its role as a public service broadcaster not only because of its membership of a climate change activism group.
Last January RTÉ representatives told an Oireachtas Committee that unless funding methods are reformed there will be ‘no sustainable future for RTÉ’ citing losses of €65 million a year.
RTÉ Director of Strategy, Rory Coveney cited misinformation and disinformation (ironic) as a threat saying how RTÉ needed the extra money to be able to “provide a comprehensive news and current affairs service that is fair and accurate and remains highly trusted by the public”.
Well, good luck on the trust bit after this….