The public deserves answers and RTÉ needs to salvage its reputation

Due to greed, a lack of financial and corporate governance, and a glaring disconnect with its loyal viewers, our national television station  has allowed damage to be visited upon it

Children in Churchfield, Cork, watch as Éamon de Valera became the first person to speak on Ireland’s television station in 1962. RTÉ's top brass have allowed ‘irreparable harm’ to be visited upon it.

It is most disheartening and distressing to see a well-regarded institution like RTÉ being brought to its knees. 

Revelations of sweet side-bar deals, orchestrated to the financial benefit of popular presenter Ryan Tubridy, have sadly undermined public trust and confidence. 

RTÉ’s credibility as a state-funded institution is in jeopardy. 

The bleakness of it all calls to mind the prescient words of Abraham Lincoln who opined that "reputation is like fine china; once broken, it’s very hard to repair".

The exorbitance of the salaries of RTÉ's ‘stars’ in contrast to the paltry sums paid to the majority of RTÉ’s hard-working staff has often grated with many.

RTÉ has, since 1962, built up a stellar reputation. Now, the continued goodwill of its viewers is uncertain. 

The Future of Media Commission, of which I was a member, invested much of its energies in assessing the future of Public Service Broadcasting. 

In particular, much emphasis was placed on the significant and primordial role of RTÉ as both a transmitter and reflector of Ireland’s indigenous culture, its unique sporting traditions, along with its impartiality as a news broadcaster.

In the late 1950s, as Ireland tendered for its first national television station, interested investors included the Vatican, Gaelinn, and a Canadian business mogul. 

All vied to take control of our national television broadcaster. 

Fortunately, the State had learned much from its early attempts at setting up 2RN — later to become Radió Éireann — and knew that if vested interests were to acquire the national station, issues such as impartiality, cultural imperatives, and a whole host of other freedoms would be jeopardised. 

In brief, we need RTÉ to reflect and refract our indigenous culture, allowing us a televisual space all to ourselves, sandwiched as we are between an Anglo-American media culture. 

This is why the back-door commercial deal with Ryan Tubridy is so significant; threatening to ruin public confidence and sucking the goodwill from all those who have buffeted and bolstered the organisation for so long.

RTÉ has long operated in a hybrid manner, carefully straddling a dignified line between its commercial and public service exigencies and responsibilities. 

Gradually, as its financial revenue became squeezed ever tighter by pervasive new media and technologies vying for the same advertising space, the commercial arm of RTÉ began to dominate. 

Therein lies the rub. 

Oversight

It would appear that the elite of corporate management sold their star to the highest bidder — and not in a transparent way. 

In the process, almost akin to the biblical Cain and Abel, the commercial arm has impugned the integrity of the Public Service entity, shattering public trust to the core.

Within The Future of Media Report, under the heading of Accountability and Transparency, it was recommended that from 2022 onwards, the Government should designate RTÉ (and TG4) as bodies under section 19 of the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2014. 

This would afford both organisations the full benefit of the oversight, advisory, and strategic planning capabilities of the NTMA, NewEra, and National Development Finance Agency.

Furthermore, the Commission recommended that RTÉ be subject to ongoing monitoring and periodic reviews by NewEra to assess up-to-date trading information. 

Moreover, in response to a discussion on salary levels at RTÉ, the Commission advised that an independent process of benchmarking pay levels at RTÉ be reviewed in comparison to other Public Service Media within the EU. 

Did Management at RTÉ seek to engage with this report and take on board these recommendations?

In recent days, many callers to RTÉ Radio 1's Liveline have been threatening to withhold their TV licence fee. Their disquiet and distrust are understandable.

Negotiations of the salaries of the stars at RTÉ have the resonance of the Gordon Gecko mantra where greed is good. 

However, let it be clear. 

The talent agents for Tubridy and other stars are just doing their job. 

If management at RTÉ believes its ‘talent’ will flee to the BBC or across the Atlantic — and is willing to pay excessive sums to keep them compliant — well, that’s on RTÉ. 

One can only speculate what deal has been struck with future Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty. 

Ultimately, when it comes to other people’s money, we, as taxpayers have been misled by a cosy coterie in RTÉ who were permitted to run the public broadcaster like their own personal fiefdom and make deals resonant of Wallstreet.

Most recently, ITV has had to conduct its own internal governance and culture review regarding the Philip Schofield revelations, where no one knew for sure, but everyone suspected. 

Now, by his own actions, Schofield’s career is over. 

Regarding Tubridy and RTÉ, the questions asked by the investigative committee in the Watergate scandal seem apt; who knew what, and when did they know it? 

Notwithstanding the moral penumbras issue raised by Tubridy’s willingness to receive top-up payments, deliberately anonymised by RTÉ to avoid detection, it is ultimately RTÉ management that must bear full responsibility for this fall from grace of our national broadcaster. 

I do not believe Tubridy should be cancelled due to the sins of his employers who paid him way too much and then tried to hide behind a complex labyrinth of financial obfuscation. 

This is not a case of ‘show me the money’ but rather show me the people who sanctioned all of that money.

Eamon de Valera was the first person to speak on Ireland’s television station in 1962. 

He compared the immense power of television to that of an atomic bomb, insisting it could be used for incalculable good but fearful it could also cause ‘irreparable harm.’ 

Due to greed, a lack of financial and corporate governance, and a glaring disconnect with its loyal viewers, our national television station, which has served us so well during the pandemic and throughout many previous historic crises,  has allowed ‘irreparable harm’ to be visited upon it from within its higher echelons.

Accountability

RTÉ director-general Dee Forbes has now resigned, and as a private citizen, cannot be compelled to attend either the Oireachtas Media Committee or the Public Accounts Committee. 

Even if she remained as director-general, she would be mindful of the outcome in Kerins v McGuinness & Ors [2019]. 

Here, the Supreme Court ruled that the Public Accounts Committee had acted unlawfully in their treatment of the former chief executive officer of Rehab when questioning her regarding public monies received by Rehab. 

Any subsequent attempts to compel Ms Kerins failed, leaving much unanswered. Hopefully, this will not be the case with RTÉ. 

The public deserves answers and RTÉ needs to salvage some of that fine china.

Dr Finola Doyle O’Neill is a Broadcast and Legal Historian at the School of History UCC