RTÉ’s Commercial Director Geraldine O’Leary has insisted she was “not in the room” and was “not involved in the construction” of the commercial deal with Ryan Tubridy.
The Oireachtas Media Committee held a hearing at Leinster House on Wednesday, to discuss the misstating of payments to Ryan, which hit headlines last week.
Speaking at the hearing, Geraldine said was asked by former Director General Dee Forbes to pay the €75,000 for year three of the deal from the RTÉ barter account, but didn’t know the fee was underwritten by the state broadcaster.
She added that she doesn’t know if she was involved in anonymising the payments or listing them as consultancy fees.
Later, Interim Deputy Director General Adrian Lynch said RTÉ should never underwrite commercial agreements.
RTÉ was plunged into chaos last week after it was revealed that Ryan’s earnings were publicly understated by €345,000 over the last six years.
Last Thursday, 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 has since resigned from her role.
Amid the ongoing controversy, the earnings of RTÉ’s top presenters will now be subject to an external review to see if their reported salaries match their actual salaries.
A host of the RTÉ’s highest earning presenters have since publicly disclosed their earnings – including Claire Byrne, Miriam O’Callaghan, Joe Duffy and Ray D’Arcy, in a bid to prove their transparency.
On Tuesday evening, RTÉ released what they had promised to be a “comprehensive statement” addressing the misstating of payments to their highest earning presenter Ryan Tubridy from 2020 to 2022.
The full statement, from the Interim Deputy Director-General Adrian Lynch, can be read here.
Some of the key points in the broadcaster’s statement include:
- The statement claims that no member of the RTÉ Executive Board, other than the Director General, had all the necessary information in order to understand that the publicly declared figures for Ryan Tubridy could have been wrong.
- The commercial deal between Ryan Tubridy and Ryan’s agent was arranged through RTÉ’s Commerical Director, allegedly at the direction of Dee Forbes.
- A credit note for the extra payments were issued at the request of Dee Forbes and Ryan was unaware of such credit note.
- Negotiations for Ryan’s new contract and salary, took place from March 2020 until October 2020, during the COVID pandemic. Mainly over Zooms and email correspondence.
The statement, which was due to be released at 3pm but was delayed until after 5pm, does not explain the under-reporting of Ryan’s pay between 2017 and 2019, as it is the subject of a separate review.
It’s important to note that, at the time of publishing this piece, Dee Forbes, the former Director General had not commented on the statement and had not contributed to the statement in any way.
When contacted for a comment regarding RTÉ’s statement, a spokesperson for Ms. Forbes told Goss.ie that she wouldn’t be making any further comments.
