Ryan Tubridy 'focusing on rebuilding listeners' trust' as RTÉ pay report published
Ryan Tubridy. Picture: Gareth Chaney Collins
Ryan Tubridy said he is committed to rebuilding the trust of listeners and the public after a report into the understatement of his pay backed his claim that a misapplication of accounting rules by RTÉ was to blame.
The national broadcaster on Wednesday published a report by Grant Thornton into the affair, which found that RTÉ "on the balance of probabilities" understated the former host's earnings to make it appear that he had earned less than €500,000 per year.
RTÉ had been forced to ask Grant Thornton to carry out the review into the under-declaration of payments by €120,000 to Mr Tubridy. The report was delivered on Monday and published this morning.
The report concerns alleged discrepancies regarding Mr Tubridy’s pay between the years 2017 and 2019.
Mr Tubridy’s earnings were stated by RTÉ as €491,667 for 2017, €495,000 in 2018 and €495,000 in 2019 when his fees were actually €511,667 , €545,000 and €545,000 respectively.
The report said there was no document to explain why the €120,000 end-of-contract fee was split up across 2017, 2018 and 2019 the way it had.
Calculations carried out by a specialist forensic accountant who authored the report concluded that the €20,000 understatement in 2017 followed by the €50,000 under-declaration in 2018 and 2019, matched closely to the minimum amounts needed to bring the fees under €500,000.
The report concluded: “Having conducted my exercise, on the balance of probabilities, I find that in the absence of any other further explanations, my hypothetical exercise (which assumed the adjustments were made with an RTÉ objective to achieve a position where the ‘revised earnings’ for each year 2017, 2018, and 2019 were all below €500,000) provides a very plausible explanation as to how the values of the adjustments of €20,000 , €50,000 and €50,000 were calculated or allocated by RTÉ for 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively.
“Whilst my exercise provides a very plausible explanation, (it) is not possible to be conclusive without having met all individuals to date,” it states.
Former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes and director of content Jim Jennings are named as two individuals who were not interviewed for the report and have not commented on it.
The report confirms that the board of RTÉ was "correct in restating Mr Tubridy’s publicly disclosed earnings for the period between 2017 and 2019" back in June and makes clear that "neither Mr Tubridy nor NK Management had any involvement in the adjustments for the period 2017-2019".
In a statement, RTÉ said the report confirms that while the earnings were publicly understated, there was "no impact on RTÉ’s financial statements as a result of these adjustments".
While there is no determination of a cause, the report "suggests a hypothesis that on the balance of probabilities adjustments were made for the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 in order to allow for ‘revised earnings’ below a figure of €500,000 in each year" for Mr Tubridy.
Mr Tubridy has welcomed the findings.
"I also welcome the report's findings that I did not claim €120,000 in fees which was due to me in 2020 and that I did not agree with how RTÉ proposed to account for this decision," he said in a statement on Wednesday.
He said that the report had made it clear that his "actual income from RTÉ in 2020 and 2021 matches what was originally published as my earnings for those years and RTÉ has not yet published its top ten earner details for 2022".
Mr Tubridy, who is in talks to return to the airwaves with RTÉ, said his focus now is on rebuilding the trust of his listeners.
"I am committed to re-establishing the confidence and trust of my colleagues and listeners, and I hope that any fair assessment of the findings of today’s report will help in this regard.
"Finally, I want to acknowledge the huge support that I have received in recent weeks from people across the country; many cards and letters, greetings on the street and words of support from people I bumped into meant an awful lot to me and I appreciate them all very much."
The report highlights poor governance at RTÉ including significant deficiencies in internal management controls, failures in the finance function, and a lack of communication from the executive to the board.
Chair of the RTÉ board, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, said the report showed major failings in the RTÉ culture at a management level "that has prevailed in RTÉ and supports the decision by the board to initiate an ongoing programme of corrective action".
"The report paints a picture of poor internal communication and weak processes. The report identifies specific dates whereby errors could have been corrected but were not and key documents that could have been effectively interrogated but were not.
"It is also clear from the report that the then executive did not properly engage with the board on these matters, nor was relevant information provided to the Board by the Executive or by the auditors. We will be taking on board the issues raised by the report and will be engaging with RTÉ’s auditors, Deloitte, to discuss the contents of same."
"Steps have been taken to ensure there can be no repeat of these failures," she added.
The RTÉ Trade Union Group said it is "gravely disturbed" by the report's findings, while RTÉ Director-General, Kevin Bakhurst said that "clearly, operational failures identified within the RTÉ finance function significantly contributed to the misstatement of fees paid".
Media Minister Catherine Martin said she has spoken to Ms Ní Raghallaigh and "stressed the need for RTÉ to act with urgency to address these lapses and ensure that robust processes are put in place without delay".
In late June, when RTÉ first made the public aware of issues regarding Mr Tubridy’s pay between 2017 and 2022, a statement from its board said that along with being paid €225,000 more than was publicly known from 2020 to 2022, the presenter’s pay had also been understated for the years 2017-2019 by €120,000.
However, while the later payments related to the by-now infamous tripartite deal involving Mr Tubridy, RTÉ and Renault, the presenter and his agent Noel Kelly claimed when appearing before two Oireachtas committees last month that the €120,000 issue related to a misapplication of accounting rules by RTÉ.
The report backs Mr Tubridy in this and it comes as RTÉ has seen another plummet in TV licence fee sales of around €1m as the national broadcaster continues to suffer the fallout from the payments scandal.
A spokesperson for Ms Martin has said TV licence sales for the second week of August were 7,166 compared to 12,610 for the corresponding week in 2022.
This is a fall off of around €1m.
This is in addition to a drop off in sales of €3.7m for the first week of August and the month of July since the payments scandal surrounding Ryan Tubridy emerged.
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