Brendan Lenihan: The RTÉ Board should have known more and earlier

Over the coming months no doubt there will be some soul-searching done within the RTÉ Board about what might have been done earlier to prevent the reputational damage done.

At last week’s Oireachtas hearing, former RTÉ chair Moya Doherty’s doctrine of the three ways that boards garner information (served up by management, from the external auditors and when on walkabouts) was challenged, immediately and incredulously by her questioner Mattie McGrath.

But what is it the spotlighted independent non-executive directors (INEDs) on RTÉ’s board could have done differently? If transactions covering a fraction of 1% of spend lead to catastrophic reputational loss, why would anyone sign up to an expectation that the boards should be across everything?