Peter Fitzpatrick TD has hit out at RTÉ for throwing former Director General Dee Forbes “under the bus”.
Last week, it was revealed that Ryan Tubridy’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.
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 later resigned from her role.
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.
Members of RTÉ’s board and executive arrived at Leinster House on Wednesday to provide evidence to the joint committee on tourism, culture, arts, sport and media amid the ongoing scandal.
During the meeting, Peter Fitzpatrick TD hit out at RTÉ for throwing the former Director General “under the bus”.
The Louth native revealed he was of the opinion that Dee “must have had some amount of allies” while working for the broadcaster.
He questioned: “Are you trying to tell me that Dee Forbes ran everything? Ran 1800 people..?”
