Tubridy off air as controversy rages over €345,000 payment

Ryan Tubridy issued a statement on the matter this evening. File Picture: Colin Keegan/ Collins Dublin

RTÉ has admitted paying Ryan Tubridy €345,000 more than what it stated publicly it was paying him.

In a detailed statement, RTÉ said the money was paid between 2017 and 2022, and was above his annual published salary.

The payments were uncovered after a “transparency” issue about payments made to Mr Tubridy was identified during a routine audit of RTÉ’s 2022 accounts in March.

As a result, the broadcaster’s Audit and Risk Committee commissioned Grant Thornton to carry out an independent fact-finding review into the issue.

The findings of that review were given to RTÉ last Friday and brought before the RTÉ board on Monday.

The review carried out by Grant Thornton concerned a separate agreement under which Mr Tubridy was guaranteed by RTÉ an additional annual income of €75,000 which was intended to come from a commercial partner. File Picture: Stedman/RollingNews.ie

Mr Tubridy has issued a statement on the matter in which he says he is "surprised" and "disappointed" by the findings and that he cannot answer for RTÉ's "mistakes" in reporting his earnings. 

As a result of the issue over Mr Tubridy’s pay, RTÉ also conducted an internal review of the reporting of the remuneration of its top 10 most highly paid on air presenters.

This review has, RTÉ said, found that the full cost to RTÉ of its contracts with the other such on air presenters has been correctly reported.

The broadcaster says it has also now asked Grant Thornton to review the contracts of RTÉ’s top 10 most highly paid on air presenters to “independently validate that all remuneration figures have been correctly stated and accounted for” by RTÉ.

Grant Thornton will also review the understatement by RTÉ of Mr. Tubridy’s published remuneration by €120,000 in the period 2017-2019.

In a statement issued today, RTÉ said: “The RTÉ Board considers the public misstating of RTÉ’s financial information to be a very serious matter and has moved as quickly as it could, once it had independently established the facts, to publish the correct figures.”

Before RTÉ announced in March Mr Tubridy was to step down from The Late Late Show in May, he was RTÉ’s highest-paid person.

Information provided by RTÉ and which was widely reported appeared to show that he took a pay cut of €55,000 or 11 per cent between 2019 and 2021 and this brought his total remuneration down to €440,000.

He was paid through his company Tuttle Productions Ltd, earning €495,000 in 2019 and €466,250 in 2020.

Rte also provided details of other high earners, including second-highest paid Ray D’Arcy, whose fees had fallen from €450,000 in 2019 to €305,000 in 2020 and 2021.

Joe Duffy, whose earnings of €392,000 in 2019 had dropped to €351,000 by 2021, was the third highest paid.

The figures, part of a wider release earlier this year, were reported as evidence that RTÉ had kept its pledge to slash by 15% the fees and salaries it paid its biggest names.

This was part of a previous promise to cut costs made by RTÉ in 2019 to the government at a time when it was trying to get more public funding, which it received.

The pledge had come amid a very public review, held - in part - before the Oireachtas - about RTÉ’s financial problems.

It even announced in November 2019 that it would be forced to seek €60 million in cuts over the next three years as Director General Dee Forbes stated RTÉ was in a “fight for the future”.

It was put to Ms Forbes in a Public Accounts Committee hearing in May 2018 that her main stars “would be well paid” and that the figure for Tuttle Productions, in the name of Ryan Tubridy, was €495,000.

Ms Forbes replied: “Absolutely.”

Minister: 'The public expect much higher standards' 

Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin. File Picture: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

Speaking this afternoon, Minister for Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin said she was "deeply concerned" by the details of RTÉ's statement. 

"I was advised in March 2023 that an issue had come to light in the course of the audit of the RTÉ 2022 accounts, and that a fact finding review had been commissioned by the Audit and Risk Committee of the RTÉ Board.

"I am extremely concerned at the details which were contained in RTÉ’s statement today, on foot of that review being completed," she said.

Ms Martin said that she and officials from her Department will meet with the RTÉ chairperson on Monday. 

"I have asked the chair to set out in that meeting, in detail, the issues involved, the steps the board is taking to deal with the matter, the follow on action that will be required, and the timeline for these actions."

The public rightly expect much higher standards of transparency and accountability from Ireland’s Public Service Broadcaster. It is unacceptable that these have not been met. 

Ms Marting said it will be critical for RTÉ's Board "to identify whether there are wider governance issues that need to be examined and addressed, and to ensure that there is appropriate accountability for what has occurred."

"It will be equally important for the Board to demonstrate that it is putting in place appropriate structures and processes to prevent a recurrence of a matter of this nature," she added.

Also speaking on RTÉ's Six One News, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said the details of RTÉ's report were "very serious" and "concerning."

"I think as the RTÉ board itself has said it's a breach of trust," he said. 

"Transparency is essential in matters of this kind from RTÉ, particularly being the public sector broadcaster, and in terms of its corporate governance, and in terms of presenting its accounts to Oireachtas and indeed, to the public."