LAST UPDATE | 11 Jul 2023

RYAN TUBRIDY AND his agent Noel Kelly appeared before the Oireachtas Public Accounts and Media Committees today to answer questions about undisclosed payments made to the star presenter by RTÉ.

The first meeting began at 11am and concluded at lunchtime while the second started at 3pm and finished up this evening. 

Here’s a rundown of the main takeaway’s from the meetings:

• You can look back at this morning’s coverage here. 

• After opening proceedings, PAC chair Brian Stanley expressed concern that documents  from Tubridy and Kelly relating to today’s committee hearings were published this morning at around 8:30am. A number of committee members echoed that concern. 

• In his opening statement, Kelly described the ongoing scandal as “entirely a mess of RTÉ’s own making” and that it had caused “a lot of distress”. He also said Tubridy had been made the “poster boy” for the debacle. “This is not the Ryan Tubridy scandal. This is the RTÉ scandal,” he said. 

• Tubridy used his opening statement to outline what he called “seven material untruths” that had come out of recent meetings with RTÉ executives. 

• Tubridy said his decision to leave the Late Late Show had was not connected to the payment scandal.

• Tubridy said he wants to get back on the radio working for RTÉ “as soon as possible”. 

• Many of today’s questions focussed on the labelling of invoices submitted by Kelly’s company as “consultancy fees”, something Kelly repeatedly told committee members had been done at RTÉ’s instruction. 

• Colm Burke asked Noel Kelly why he didn’t “raise concerns” when he saw that invoices were to be paid to a UK company and not Renault. Kelly said he “didn’t raise the question”. 

• Tubridy and Kelly both stated that the presenter had taken a 20% reduction in pay at a time when RTÉ was making cuts. Alan Kelly disputed that saying “there was no 20% drop in salary in real terms, and to say so has no credibility whatsoever…  it was absorbed in a different way, that is quite obvious.”

• Finally, Noel Kelly said that he essentially didn’t know former director general Dee Forbes and had only met her with her legal team in an official capacity. 

• In the second of the Oireachtas meetings attended by Tubridy and Kelly today, the pair faced questions from the Media Committee, who continued to pose questions related to the “consultancy fees” invoices.

• “Are you aware of any practice in accounting that allows an invoice to be raised, with a description that is not saying what it is actually for?” O’ Sullivan asked Kelly, who said he did what RTÉ told him to do. Kelly rejected colluding with RTÉ to hide the nature of the payment.
• Tubridy was asked about his current employment situation with RTÉ and said that he “could be out of a job by Friday”. He said that while he is still being paid by RTÉ for his job as a radio presenter, he is not sure if that will still be the case in the coming weeks. 
• Tubridy told the Media Committee: ‘Yes my salary is enormous, but that doesn’t effect my soul”. 

• TD Imelda Munster told Kelly that she doesn’t “find it credible” that it was RTÉ who initiated the ‘tripartite agreement’ between Tubridy, Renault, and the broadcaster. 

• Tubridy also confirmed that his radio contract with RTÉ is still being renegotiated but that as it stands he is under contract until 2025. 

• Tubridy said that he is still willing to do commercial events if he is “called upon”, otherwise he will hand the fee attached to the appearances back, although would would be in receipt of that reimbursement was not immediately clear.

• Kelly refused to disclose how much he makes in commission and specifically what he stood to gain from the Renault deal, saying it was “not relevant”. 

• TD Ciaran Cannon said that after six hours of committee meetings today, the Oireachtas wass no further along in understanding how the deal between Tubridy, RTÉ and Renault took place. 

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