Exit package for RTÉ financial officer did not comply with redundancy scheme

The exit package for RTÉ former chief financial officer Breda O'Keeffe was approved solely by former director general Dee Forbes.

An exit package for former RTÉ chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe, believed to be worth €400k, did not comply with the broadcaster's redundancy scheme and was instead approved by former director general Dee Forbes.

RTÉ's current director general Kevin Bakhurst confirmed Ms Forbes signed off on the exit package as a new report on the 2017 and 2021 redundancy schemes found that Ms O’Keeffe’s exit from the broadcaster was the only one of 177 redundancies that was not approved by RTÉ’s executive board.

The report, compiled by solicitor firm McCann Fitzgerald, said blame for the package not being approved at the executive committee level lies solely with RTÉ itself, not with Ms O’Keeffe.

Ms O’Keeffe appeared last summer voluntarily at the Oireachtas Media Committee to discuss the fallout from a scandal involving a secret deal to pay presenter Ryan Tubridy €225,000 over three years via a UK barter account.

At that appearance in early July, Ms O’Keeffe asserted that the request to underwrite that deal with Mr Tubridy had been rejected by RTÉ in late 2019 and that this had continued to be RTÉ’s position until her exit in March of 2020.

However, it subsequently emerged that Ms O’Keeffe had offered to provide Mr Tubridy’s agent with a side letter to underwrite the deal in February 2020, a discrepancy which Ms O’Keeffe subsequently blamed upon her version being her “best recollection of events”.

At an RTÉ town hall meeting yesterday, Ms Forbes’ successor Kevin Bakhurst described the fact that Ms O’Keeffe’s exit package, which was previously speculated to have been in the region of €400,000, had not been approved by RTÉ’s executive as “shocking” in the context of RTÉ’s financial woes at the time.

He said that while Ms O’Keeffe’s package was the only one not to go through the proper process, there could be tax implications for several others. He said that RTÉ had been in contact with the Revenue Commissioners regarding the matter.

Ms Forbes declined to be interviewed by McCanns for the purpose of the report. Ms O’Keeffe also declined to comment in person – however, she did respond to the report’s authors via her solicitors.