Ryan Tubridy has opened up about the time he appeared in front of the Oireachtas committee.
The presenter was pulled from the airwaves back in June, after it was revealed his earnings were publicly understated by €345,000 over the last six years.
In July, Ryan and his agent Noel Kelly met with the Oireachtas Media Committee, where they faced questioning over payments made to him by RTÉ.
The former Late Late Show presenter opened up to Doireann Garrihy on her podcast, The Laughs of Your Life.
He compared the day he met with the committee as “Christmas morning flipped.”
Referring to his mother’s support at the time, Ryan said: “During ‘The Thing’ she was great, she was in the hospital for a lot of it and that was one of the things I found quite difficult was when I was being thrashed by certain quarters – and the odd person – and I thought, ‘You know, I don’t mind you thrashing me but have you any idea the pain you might be causing people around me?”
“But they don’t really and that’s fine, that’s their job and off they go but my mother, they’re tough old skins around me which is good.”
He then joked that he: “had to go before an Oireachtas committee at one point, I don’t know if anyone heard that.”
“I heard people were watching in Ibiza from what I heard. Let’s not be too big about it, if I wasn’t me I’d be kind of going ‘The poor divil, the poor divil, I can’t believe…”
Ryan then mimed the sound of opening a can and joked about the fact the event went on for “seven hours”.
He continued: “I’ll say something serious about that. I got a taxi in and we were driving along – just me, I was on my own.”
He said that the taxi man was “opinionated” and went on to tell Doireann that they drove by the front gates of St Michael’s College in Dublin, where there were flowers left outside the gate in tribute to students Andrew O’Donnell and Max Wall, who died earlier this summer while on holiday in Ios.
“I looked at those, they were 18-year-old boys and I thought to myself in the back of that car, you know, having spent a few hours feeling a little sorry for myself and I thought: ‘My life is interrupted and those families’ lives are destroyed.”
“Now, you cop yourself on, you’re going in to tell the story, you’re going in to tell them everything you know and then you’re going home. Think about that.”
“And that was a very good pep talk because I didn’t know the families, I knew a lot of people that did go to Ios and Greece and that all came home and that’s humbling in the extreme.”
“I don’t know if those families have any relatives listening to your podcast, they probably do and I hope they’re doing okay. That’s what I’d say on that, that’s an important thing to say. In the middle of all this, that really did put manners on me,” Ryan revealed.
The former RTÉ presenter also mentioned how the late Sinead O’Connor offered him a place to stay in her London flat, if he ever wanted to “get away from it all.”
Ryan admitted that there was “no bitterness” from him and that it was time for change.
He also revealed that he had received offers in Ireland as well as in London after the scandal.
The understatement of Ryan’s earnings was identified during a routine audit of RTÉ’s 2022 accounts, prompting an independent review of the matter.
The issue was partly the result of a commercial deal which saw Ryan receive additional income from Renault, which was guaranteed and underwritten by RTÉ.
The commercial partner only paid €75,000 to Tubridy once in 2020, but RTÉ paid out for the years 2021 and 2022.
The manner in which these payments were recorded led to an understatement of his earnings.
RTÉ labelled two invoices of €75,000 payments to Ryan as “consultancy fees”, and the now-infamous barter account was used to pay them.
Ryan has since landed a role on Virgin Radio with a new show to air from Thursday, January 4.
Industry sources said that Noel Kelly has worked hard to land Ryan a big deal like this, and he “never gave up hope” for the presenter’s career.
Virgin Radio is owned by Wireless Group, which is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The company owns Talk TV, Talk Radio, and Virgin Radio, along with several radio stations in Ireland – including Dublin’s FM104 and Q102.
