Pat Kenny has broken his silence on the RTÉ payments scandal, defending Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly.
The former Late Late Show, who is also represented by Mr Kelly, spoke out before the pair face the Oireachtas Media and Public Accounts Committee today.
Speaking on his Newstalk show, the 75-year-old praised Ryan’s “hard work, diligence and honesty” as he addressed the ongoing scandal.
Pat told listeners: “Noel Kelly is my agent, wasn’t at the time I was in RTE but only in Newstalk and got exemplary service from Noel, no complaints, him and his team were fantastic, I have to say that.
“Also Ryan Tubridy started his career as a cub reporter on my radio show and hard work, diligence, honesty – all of those things were his hallmark and I just want to lay that on the line as well.”
The broadcaster, who was away on holiday when the story broke, also hit out at politicians for the way they’ve reacted to the situation.
He said: “I was watching this from afar so I wasn’t caught up in the Liveline calls and the calls to Lunchtime Live here and all that, and what people were saying so I was watching it from afar and there was a word that kept cropping up in my mind and that word was schadenfreude.”
“It’s a German word, doesn’t have a direct translation but what it actually means is ‘the experience of pleasure, joy or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures or humiliation of another’ – and I thought there was schadenfreude in spades going on.
“Mostly from the political side, people who have lost probably €1.5billion building a Children’s Hospital, giving out about the price of flip flops. It’s hard to take.
“There was a very interesting article that I read over the weekend that suggested this is not about them at all, it’s about the people who are asking the questions and the soundbites that they will get to do.
“That really if Noel Kelly and Ryan Tubridy are going in to try and explain things, they may not really get a chance because everybody is looking for their reportable moment online and elsewhere, which will be on their social media within minutes of them delivering the killer question.”
Pat, who parted ways with RTÉ in 2013 after 41 years, went on to explain: “I was on the board of RTE, I wasn’t put there by the staff, I was put there by the Minister of the day.
“And I know the way it used to work – basically the DG and the Chair kind of sort out the agenda for the board, documents are circulated and the board makes very few day-to-day decisions.
“And again, when you look at the nature of the funding of RTE – it was predominantly commercial at one point, in the heyday before the streamers arrived, before social media arrived and stole advertising, not just from broadcast media but from print media…
“It was predominantly commercially driven, with the licence fee paying for news, some sporting events that couldn’t wash their faces, some drama that certainly couldn’t wash its face so you had this mixture of funding, and one source of that funding has been drying up or slowing down certainly the commercial, the licence fee collection has not always been exemplary, so they’re reaching a crisis point as to where do they go from here?”
