Ryan Tubridy pay scandal: Cost of three reviews into RTÉ’s finances hits €500k

RTÉ presenter Ryan Tubridy arrives at Leinster House, Dublin, to appear  before the Committee of Public Accounts and the Media Committee hearings back in July. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

The cost of three reviews into RTÉ’s finances by consultants Grant Thornton amounts to almost €500,000 so far, new documents from the broadcaster show.

In a document dump for the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, RTÉ said the first two reviews carried out by the company cost €86,779 and €287,800.

The first of those reviews was carried out before a scandal surrounding secret payments to Ryan Tubridy broke last summer.

That review, which concluded that Mr Tubridy’s pay had been understated by €120,000 between 2017 and 2019, was subsequently followed by the second probe into how €235,000 came to be paid to Mr Tubridy between 2020 and 2022 via the now infamous tripartite deal between the presenter, RTE, and Renault.

Mr Tubridy has since been cleared of any wrongdoing in terms of the misstated €120,000, with the decision to alter his published salary between 2017 and 2019 an accounting decision taken by RTE alone.

The third review, into the costs and processes surrounding the failed Toy Show: The Musical, was commissioned following a series of seismic Oireachtas committee hearings last summer, which first heard that the much-hyped musical had made a €2.7m loss in 2022.

That review has cost €118,712 to date, RTE said, adding that the producers of the musical have now been “assigned to other producer duties within RTÉ”.

Regarding a fourth investigation by solicitors McCann Fitzgerald, into two voluntary redundancy schemes run by RTÉ in 2017 and 2021, no costs are as yet available as the review has yet to complete, the broadcaster said.

Separately in the released documents, RTÉ said that it would be denying the PAC’s request to write to all of its employees to ask them about gifts they may have received in 2017, due to its “inability to compel replies” and the “natural frailty of human memory”.

It said that it is currently in the process of setting up a gifts register for all employees, with final proposals as to what format the register will take to go to RTÉ’s interim leadership team before the end of November.

RTÉ claims that, contrary to certain publicly expressed opinions, the levels of RTÉ performers or contractors appearing on flagship programmes is quite low.

It said that just 8% of Tommy Tiernan’s 237 guests had contributed to other RTÉ shows, with the same figure for the flagship Late Late Show standing at just 5.6%, or 19 out of 300 guests over the past 5 years.

The Angela Scanlon show, Ask Me Anything, displayed a higher ratio, however, 14.5%, or 10 out of the 69 guests who have appeared to date.

RTÉ declined to expand at length upon its losses in the year to date, stating that its earnings before tax and interest in the year to end September were €11m.

It said that leaving the well-noted loss of TV licence renewals aside, its “performance for 2023 is tracking in line with or better than budget”. 

It declined to reveal its commercial revenue for the same period, saying to do so would be “commercially detrimental”.

In terms of its bogus self-employment liability, RTÉ said that the €1.2m settlement it made with the Revenue Commissioners in 2021 related to just 35 individuals.

At least 500 workers are currently the subject of reviews by the Department of Social Protection regarding whether or not they were incorrectly labelled as contractors rather than direct employees over the past 30 years. At a recent PAC hearing, RTÉ said that its final bill for those misclassifications will be “less than €20m”.