Terry Prone on 'disastrous' 10 days for RTÉ and Ryan Tubridy

Broadcaster Ryan Tubridy on February 12, 2020.

One story has dominated the airwaves and the newspapers across the last fortnight and there are no signs that will change any time soon.

The 'secret payments' made from RTÉ to presenter Ryan Tubridy worth €345,000 across 2017 to 2022 has left the nation shocked, saddened and everything in between.

Two appearances from the RTÉ executives and board members did nothing to quell the anger from the public and Tubridy's fellow RTÉ employees.

Irish Examiner columnist and communications expert Terry Prone has been keeping a watchful eye on the unfolding saga and the key players involved.

Here is how she has assessed the scandal so far.

The reputational damage dwarfs the sum involved

Imagine this. Imagine that the head of the parks department in a local authority was being paid, directly, not through the normal payroll, €75,000 per year by — let’s say — a company supplying tractors to the local authority.

It couldn’t happen. Maybe in the bad old days but not today.

And, in the unlikely event that it did happen, RTÉ’s Prime Time Investigates would get wind of it and expose it as a failure in public service governance.

Ryan Tubridy needed to own his faux pas, but he totally missed the point

If you go on the Six One news, being liked by David McCullough shouldn’t be your objective. No, let’s put that more firmly. It cannot and must not be your objective. The person to reach, inform, and influence is the viewer. Any deflection from that wastes taxpayer money and viewer time.

Someone needs to tell this to Adrian Lynch, the new deputy director general of RTÉ.

Because Lynch came home from his travels last week, got promoted, arrived at the news studio wearing a cute lapelled cardigan, and got personal with McCullough.

Why was the RTÉ director general negotiating with an agent?

As the door banged behind Dee Forbes, her final statement arrived.

Most final statements attract cliches such as “closing the door”, “drawing a line”, and “putting the issue to bed".

This one actually invited door-pushing, drew no effective line, and kept the issue up and awake.

Towards the end of the statement, she apologised “unreservedly” (when will we ever see someone apologise reservedly?) for “my part in this episode".

It has to be asked why she’s apologising towards the end of a statement, the bulk of which goes to establish that she did everything out of love for RTÉ, knew her objectives, didn’t go against advice, and generally did everything right.

RTÉ's statement fails to nail down who came up with the method of deception

Outside RTÉ were some of the best-known faces from our TV screens — the ones we’re used to telling us what’s what, and asking severe questions of politicians, public servants, and business people.

On Tuesday afternoon, under a threatening sky, those household names and faces were answering, rather than asking, questions.

Answering them with contained fury.

Asserting their pride in their work, their appreciation of their colleagues, and their absolute dissatisfaction with management practices as revealed by the Ryan Tubridy scandal.

RTÉ's highest-paid shouldn’t get freebies — they can buy their own

The one thing that’s clear, after the two Oireachtas Committees’ interrogation of RTÉ’s top brass, is that the Tubridy saga happened because of corporate governance failures.

That confession, oddly, makes everybody comfortable, even the top management from RTÉ.

Or perhaps especially the top management, who nodded in agreement with their own grave diagnosis over the two days.

It’s as if corporate governance was an inanimate object, like the chair Goldilocks broke. What the top brass don’t seem to get is that they are corporate governance.