RTÉ’s Chief Financial Officer has said he was focused on greater financial issues at the time of Ryan Tubridy’s contract talks.
Just weeks ago, RTÉ was plunged into chaos when it was revealed that their highest-paid presenter’s earnings were publicly understated by €345,000 over the last six years.
The issue was identified during a routine audit of RTÉ’s 2022 accounts, prompting an independent review of the matter.
The RTÉ Board issued an apology over the error, and later Ryan also apologised for not questioning RTÉ over his published earnings.
The scandal resulted in the suspension of RTÉ’s Director General Dee Forbes, who later resigned from her role.
During the initial hearing, it emerged that RTÉ had underwritten a commercial sponsorship of Ryan by Renault.
RTÉ labelled invoices of €75,000 payments as “consultancy fees” and the now-infamous barter account was used to pay them.
Last week, CFO Richard Collins denied he had any knowledge of these excess payments to Ryan.
On Wednesday, the RTÉ Board and executives arrived at Leinster House once again, this time to face questioning from the Oireachtas Media Committee.
During the hearing, Mr Collins gave a lengthy statement, saying he was more focused on RTÉ’s greater financial woes, having significantly dropped in income by €7 million due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The CFO insisted once again that he didn’t know that RTÉ had guaranteed side income to the presenter.
Mr Collins said: “We were heading towards running out of cash. I was totally focused on preserving jobs and negotiating with the Government. That was my clear focus.”
“This commercial agreement was being handled by the DG – I concluded the straight forward part of the deal”
“I had bigger issues to deal with”.
“On 30 April it was confirmed there would be no indemnity given to the deal. That was the last I heard of it. It was news to me that the guarantee was given.”
