RTÉ BOARD CHAIR Siún Ní Raghallaigh has revealed that she asked former director general Dee Forbes to resign on 16 June, nearly a week before controversial secret payments to presenter Ryan Tubridy were made public.
RTÉ representatives are being questioned by the Oireachtas Media Committee in relation to undisclosed payments to Tubridy as part of a commercial agreement.
Ní Raghallaigh said RTÉ’s Audit and Risk Committee recommended that Forbes’s resignation be sought after it was given a review carried out by Grant Thornton about the payments.
“When the Grant Thornton report was delivered to the audit and risk committee, the audit and risk committee made recommendations and one of those recommendations was to ask for her resignation,” Ní Raghallaigh said.
The RTÉ board said in a statement last Friday, 23 June, that Forbes had been suspended on Wednesday 21 June.
Forbes then tendered her resignation, with immediate effect, the following Monday, 26 June.
Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin put it to Ní Raghallaigh that the board should not have accepted Forbes’s resignation when it was tendered last Monday, as it meant she could no longer be compelled to appear before the committee.
“She still has the option to come before the committee,” Ní Raghallaigh replied.
An RTÉ statement published yesterday said Forbes was the only person who knew the full details of the deal.
Tubridy’s annual earnings, as published by RTÉ, between the years 2017-2022 ranged from €440,000-€491,667 but the review found that his annual earnings from RTÉ in those years actually ranged from €511,667-€545,000.
The issue was partly the result of a deal which saw Tubridy receive additional income from commercial partner Renault, with that income guaranteed and underwritten by RTÉ. The manner in which these payments were recorded led to an understatement of his earnings, with RTÉ apologising for the mistake. Tubridy himself has apologised for ‘not questioning’ the published figures but said doing so was RTÉ’s responsibility.
Griffin questioned whether board members should be considering their own positions for allowing Ms Forbes to quit before she had faced parliamentarians.
Ní Raghallaigh conceded that board members had not talked about the implications for the parliamentary committees when deliberating over Ms Forbes’ resignation.
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