RTÉ criticised for failing to appear before Public Accounts Committee

Director general of RTÉ Dee Forbes will not appear before the Public Accounts Committee due to 'a very busy schedule'. Picture: Maxwell Photography 

RTÉ's decision not to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been sharply criticised by committee members.

Director General Dee Forbes was summoned before the PAC, but a fortnight ago she informed the committee she would be unable to attend “due to a very busy schedule at that time”. 

During a lengthy debate regarding a back-payment made by RTÉ to the Revenue Commissioners with regard to a number of employees who had wrongly been classified as being self-employed, Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy said he felt the fact RTÉ wouldn’t be now appearing before the committee until late January was not “good enough”.

“It would set a worrying precedent if RTÉ were to contact any of us for an interview on any given matter and for us to tell them that we’d come back to them in two and a half months,” he said.

"That is what they’ve done and I don’t think that’s good enough."

The committee discussed the apparent discrepancy between correspondence it had received from the secretary general of the Department of Social Protection John McKeon and the Revenue Commissioners regarding the penalty payment made on foot of the workers who had been wrongfully self-employed.

In his letter, Mr McKeon stressed the payment had amounted to “approximately €953,000 being collected in respect of PRSI”. However, that figure appears to be at odds with a communication from the Revenue to RTÉ last summer asserting that “RTÉ’s offer of €1,223,252 in respect of the conclusion that some individuals treated as contractors should have been treated as employees has been accepted by the Revenue Commissioners”.

The committee agreed to seek further redacted details as to the breakdown in terms of individual payments of the €1.2m settlement, something RTÉ had declined to provide "due to personal data considerations relating to GDPR legislation".

The committee further heard RTÉ has paid out defamation settlements since 2010 totalling €10.4m, adding that figure does not take into account refunds from insurers.