LAST UPDATE | 1 Feb
MEDIA MINISTER CATHERINE Martin has said a series of reports into RTÉ’s finances point to a “dysfunctionality” at the broadcaster.
Martin was speaking after the latest report published yesterday found that the exit package for RTÉ’s former chief financial officer, Breda O’Keeffe, was not considered or approved by RTÉ executives.
An external report on “golden handshakes” within the national broadcaster revealed that RTÉ’s exit package for its former chief financial officer was “not considered and approved” by the broadcaster’s executive board, despite it being a requirement under the rules of its voluntary redundancy scheme.
The McCann FitzGerald LLP report found responsibility for this lies with RTÉ, and O’Keeffe told the report’s authors she had “no awareness” that her package had not been approved by the board.
Martin said the McCann Fitzgerald report highlighted a “shocking disregard in terms of the treatment of staff, in terms of the inequality that it shows, the lack of fairness and the lack of transparency”.
She added: “It’s quite shocking that the executive put rules and procedures in place to govern the voluntary exit schemes and then do not adhere to them themselves.
“So some staff have the rules rigidly applied, but there’s (another) rule for the others, and that’s an appalling culture that existed at the time.”
Meanwhile, Martin said two government reports will provide a “crucial piece of the puzzle in bringing stability to RTÉ” as they will include recommendations on what needs to be done.
The two government reports into culture, governance and HR at RTE are due by the end of February.
Elsewhere, the Chair of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee has said former RTÉ Director General Dee Forbes still has questions to answer.
Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that there are several members of the national broadcaster’s higher echelons that should speak to the Committee as soon as possible, including former CFO Breda O’Keefe.
He added that it is “very regrettable” that the former Director General Dee Forbes has yet to face the Committee as she “isn’t available”.
“She looms large in this report, as she has in previous issues that we’ve dealt with – false invoices, credit notes, barter accounts, understatement of top salaries, etcetera.”
He says he committee still needs to hear from the former Chief Financial Officer Breda O’Keefe about her “goodbye package”.
Eimer Cusack, Head of Human Resources at RTÉ, is another person Stanley would like to hear from, as she was instructed by the former DG to implement O’Keefe’s “goodbye package”.
“It’s the public sector broadcaster is there to hold other people to account … if at the heart of that we see these sweetheart deals, abuse of power, false accountancy, misleading practices, appalling practices in terms of corporate governance, then we see the house of cards collapse,” said Stanley.
“It can’t be soon enough, but we do have to give a certain amount of notice.
He’s anxious to complete the report so that the national broadcaster can become a “new RTÉ” for the future.
Emma O’Kelly, RTÉ staffer and chair of the National Union of Journalists Dublin broadcasting branch said she and her colleagues are “disgusted” and “outraged”.
“We’ve got yet another glimpse of the parallel universe that exists in RTÉ and it is really just sickening.
“We are throwing our hands up once again and going, ‘what kind of an organization are we working for?’.”
She said that the ongoing internal staffing review is overshadowed by a breakdown of trust.
“People have no confidence that they will be treated fairly by senior management or by HR.
“More often than not the assumption by people in RTÉ is that, in fact, you won’t be treated fairly.”
O’Kelly says many people who applied for the voluntary redundancy scheme were “gutted” to be rejected, and now face uncertainty about who will get the package, and how that decision is made by management.
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