Terry Prone: Siún Ní Raghallaigh resigns. The RTÉ caravan moves on. The roadkill continues

Siún Ní Raghallaigh, former chair of the RTE Board, leaving the Joint Committee Meeting on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport & Media on RTE Expenditure at Leinster House on Kildare Street, Dublin. Picture: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

She told officials the details of the financial controller’s departure from RTÉ, back when it happened. When she specifically did not, this week, tell the Minister those same details, the Minister, subsequently finding them out, went as near bananas as Catherine Martin ever goes, twice refusing to publicly express confidence in Siún Ní Raghallaigh. 

Not a stake-in-the-heart the way expressing no confidence would have been, but at least a stake-in-the-chest.

This Friday morning, the chair of the RTÉ governing body resigned. The caravan moves on. The roadkill continues.

The first question about this odd failure to inform the Minister, against a background of Ms Siún Ní Raghallaigh’s claimed earlier transfer of detail to departmental officials, is why? 

The current cliché advises following the money. It might be better to follow the approach of ancient Rome’s Lucius Cassius, regarded as a wise judge, who always asked “Qui bono?” Meaning “Who benefits from this?” If that question is asked, the sad obvious answer is “Pretty much nobody.” 

Ms Ní Raghallaigh seems to have repeatedly told Ms Martin that the Board had no role in approving the Collins exit package. In fact, the remuneration committee of that Board had taken precisely that role. Now, the recently resigned Chair might have decided that the remuneration committee wasn’t the Board proper, but why should she not have made that point to Martin?

Or the explanation might be simpler. Standing in the wreckage of the national broadcaster, doing her best to support the Director General, coping with the sinkholes and flying brickbats of the ongoing controversy, Siún Ní Raghallaigh may simply have forgotten and believed, accordingly, that the information she was giving the Minister was solid. It’s difficult to see how, had she remembered, she would not have foreseen the truth emerging, and nothing in her brief sojourn at the top of the national broadcaster gives an insight into who could possibly have benefited.

Of course, members of the remuneration committee who were party to the arrangement with Collins knew they had been party to the arrangement. The questions therefore arise: Why the hell didn’t they catch hold of their Chair the first minute she misled the Minister? Were they consulted before she did so? If not, why not? That committee was the obvious one to ask because it was likely to have had agency. Inevitably, too, Kevin Bakhurst must surely have known the truth of it? Concealing it presented him with no benefit, so perhaps the drowning-in-detail rationale applies, there, too.

Culture Minister Catherine Martin speaking at Government Buildings, Dublin, after meeting RTE Board chair Siun Ni Raghallaigh and RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Now comes the search for a replacement Chair. On the face of it, nobody in their right mind would want the gig. But – right mind or not – many will. This country is not short of people carrying impregnable self-belief. They’ve been successful in the day job, therefore believe this would be a continuation of their track record. Or they’ve been vocal on aspects of corporate governance, therefore could be seen as a new broom.

The problem with the new broom analogy is recent history. Moya Doherty was a new broom and we ended up with Toy Show the Farcical. Siún Ní Raghallaigh was a new broom and went from reforming hero to exit in a shockingly short time. Plus, new brooming is not easy when you have a Board that was party to recent events and also seems leakier than a colander.

Suggestions that the Minister should cull the whole lot of them will undoubtedly emerge over the weekend. But hold…The members of the Board (including the Chair) were selected and appointed following a rigorous (not to say tedious) process. They were presented with a set of performance requirements so vague, cosmic and unrealistic as to militate against delivery. They encountered a rolling series of catastrophes started by the revelations about Ryan Tubridy’s payments. They found themselves – along with members of the Management team, ridiculously called The Executive Board – in front of Oireachtas Committees, where some of them loved the chance to do straight talking, before that straight talking came back and bit them in sensitive places.

Were the Board to be made walk the plank, that might satisfy what might be called the Ruairi Quinn hunger out there at the moment. The mood wants a head and better still if it’s heads, plural.

But replacing the Chair and the Board is like bringing up the numbers of Gardaí. There’s easier, better paid gigs.