Paul Hosford: RTÉ is the star of its own best drama this week — or is it a true crime show?

Agent Noel Kelly and Ryan Tubridy in 2010. On Friday, the Taoiseach brought a dismal week for RTE to a close by saying he cannot rule out the possibility that some payments at RTÉ were 'on the wrong side of the law'.

"Maybe the taxpayer was defrauded."

RTÉ chief financial officer Richard Collins spoke the words and then stopped, perhaps just then grasping the enormity of them, leaving the sentence hanging in Committee Room 3 in the bowels of the LH2000 office building which adjoins Leinster House.

It was the first time that the legality of the method of payment to Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly had been addressed in a week of chaos for the national broadcaster that culminated in the Taoiseach questioning whether company law had been broken and invites to more Oireachtas committees being sent.

The week started with eyes on the Oireachtas and whether its committees would be able to move on the revelation that Mr Tubridy had been paid far in excess of his stated salaries between 2017 and 2022. 

However, events couldn't wait until Wednesday's Oireachtas media committee meeting as former director general Dee Forbes sensationally quit at 7am on Monday morning, saying she is “ultimately responsible” following the scandal over undisclosed payments to the star presenter.

Former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes on February 12, 2020.

Ms Forbes was suspended from the position last week and was already due to step down from her role next month.

In a statement, Ms Forbes said: “I regret very much the upset and adverse publicity suffered by RTÉ, its staff, and the unease created among the public in recent days."

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In response, RTÉ promised a comprehensive statement would come on Tuesday afternoon, bating the breath of journalists inside and out of Montrose. All nine pages of it and a 20-page Grant Thornton report put the blame for the entire issue at the feet of Ms Forbes. 

Its interim director general Adrian Lynch said that no member of RTÉ’s executive other than Ms Forbes “had all the necessary information in order to understand that the publicly declared figures for Ryan Tubridy could have been wrong”.

Interim director general Adrian Lynch arriving for a Public Accounts Committee meeting. Picture: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

The statement came with assurances that invitations to the media committee and Thursday's Dáil Public Accounts Committee would be taken up.

If the broadcaster's executive thought that these two days of hearings would draw a line under the issue and allow everyone to move on, they were sadly mistaken.

Early Wednesday, RTÉ announced that contract talks with Mr Tubridy had been paused. His current contract, negotiated in 2020, was set to expire in 2025, but the station said it was no longer in place due to the host leaving The Late Late Show. Mr Tubridy seemingly disagreed with this assessment as RTÉ executives filed into Leinster House. 

But the meeting was to be bruising for the witnesses, as the chairwoman of RTÉ’s board revealed she asked its director general to quit almost a week before the scandal about misreported payments became public. Siún Ní Raghallaigh made the disclosure to the committee before clarifying that she had not told her line minister, Catherine Martin, despite the two having a meeting eight days later to discuss the issue. 

The committee heard that Mr Tubridy had been due a €120,000 loyalty bonus which hadn't been paid and there was an "adjustment" undertaken, but every witness distanced themselves from full knowledge of the commercial agreement which saw Mr Tubridy's income topped up by €75,000 a year, whether or not a commercial partner paid it.

While the Wednesday session raised more questions than it provided answers, the Thursday session was hardly crystal clear. Mr Collins made his statement about fraud, and also said he believed there was “concealment” or “deception” in two €75,000 payments to Tubridy, which bumped his total annual fee up to €515,000.

But much of the day's focus was not on that, or the revelation that the invoices had actually been paid out to Mr Kelly and not Mr Tubridy. Instead, it was on what the TDs present called RTÉ's "slush fund" and that money had flowed through a UK-based barter account, including €111,000 spent on trips to the 2019 Rugby World Cup, €138,000 on a number of 10-year IRFU season tickets, and €26,000 on a trip to the 2019 Champions League final in Madrid.

All told, up to €1.25m had passed through that account over the past 10 years.

On Friday, the Taoiseach brought a dismal week for the organisation to a close by saying he cannot rule out the possibility that some payments at RTÉ were "on the wrong side of the law", but stopped short of calling for a Garda investigation at the broadcaster. 

Then the media committee invited more witnesses including Mr Tubridy, meaning this debacle will rumble into a third week.