LAST UPDATE | 29 Jun 2023

RTE SPENT €138,000 on IRFU season tickets and €111,000 on travel and accommodation for the Rugby World Cup via a “barter account”, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The broadcaster’s chief financial officer Richard Collins said the money was spent to bring “clients” to the 2019 rugby world cup in Japan, but could not say who these clients were.

Senior RTÉ executives were before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee today to face questioning over secret payments to presenter Ryan Tubridy which topped up his salary by €345,000 over six years.

The payments were made through a barter account, a type of account used to record the exchange of goods or services for other goods or services.

Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon asked the representatives what else the barter account was used for.

Geraldine O’Leary said the account was used to pay for clients to go to the Rugby World Cup. She said she could not name those clients without their permission.

O’Leary herself, one of her colleagues and four guests went on that trip. O’Leary said it is “not unusual” for commercial to host clients at events.

The committee heard that €138,000 was spent on ten-year IRFU season tickets, while €26,000 related to the 2019 Champions League final.

When Dillon asked where the money came from, O’Leary said: “I have no direct recall.”

Chair of the RTÉ board Siún Ní Raghallaigh said the expenditure was “outrageous” and that it should go through the procurement system.

She said she believes this has now been put in place.

Robert Shortt, RTÉ economics correspondent and staff representative on the broadcaster’s board, said he was shocked to hear about the barter account but accepts that barter accounts are something that is widely used.

Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor asked if ordinary staff were familiar with the “amount of perks associated with this job”, referring to the use of the barter account for IRFU tickets and the Champions League.

Shortt said the joke for editorial staff in RTÉ was that “the RTÉ Guide is the perk”, before adding that they might not even get the Christmas RTÉ Guide.

“In RTÉ the joke is that the RTÉ Guide is the perk” says staff member Robert Short to PAC. He is so right. We ordinary staff jokingly used to call the bumper Christmas edition the ‘company car’ - IF we managed to get our hands on a very rare free copy.

— emma o kelly (@emma_okelly) June 29, 2023

In a tweet this evening, former managing director of RTÉ News Jon Williams said he attended the 2019 Champions League final in Madrid in a personal capacity and paid for all travel costs himself.

In answer to a question raised in the Oireachtas this afternoon, as a #LFC fan, I went to the 2019 #UCL final in Madrid. I was there in a personal capacity. I bought my ticket & paid for all the travel costs myself. I received no hospitality and there was no cost to #RTE.

— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) June 29, 2023

Additional reporting by PA