Vivienne Clarke
Updated: 12.20pm
Former Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly have agreed to appear before the Oireachtas Media Committee next week to answer questions relating to controversial payments made by RTÉ to Mr Tubridy between 2017 and 2022.
RTÉ representatives appeared before the Media and Public Accounts Committees last week, and will attend the former again on Wednesday afternoon.
According to The Irish Times, the pair wrote to the committee via their solicitor on Wednesday morning, stating they "wish to fully cooperate and assist" with the committee's investigations.
"They believe that they have important information that will assist the committee," the letter added.
It is understood that Mr Tubridy and Mr Kelly will meet the committee privately before facing questions at a public meeting.
In a statement released on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the latest committee hearing, Minister for the Media Catherine Martin said she has spoken with the chair of the RTÉ board, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, "particularly around the deeply unsatisfactory nature in which information is being provided by the executive".
"She informed me that the board has now written to the deputy director general [Adrian Lynch] and the incoming director general [Kevin Bakhurst] outlining that this is totally unacceptable, and that it has eroded their trust and confidence in the executive.
"In this context, the board has requested that swift action be taken. The chair will speak more on this issue at the Media Committee today," Ms Martin added.
The Minister also said her meeting with Ms Ní Raghallaigh, Mr Lynch and Mr Bakhurst has been brought forward from Friday to Thursday "given the urgency of these matters".
She added Grant Thornton has been directed to undertake a further review focusing on the Toy Show: The Musical, which made a loss of €2.2 million according to the Irish Examiner.
'Nuclear button'
It comes after the committee's chair Niamh Smyth said Ms Martin will be “hitting the nuclear button” to bring in an external examiner “to really get into what has gone on in terms of the financial dealings of RTÉ and the commercial entities”.
The Fianna Fáil TD told Newstalk Breakfast that she is “struggling” to have confidence in the RTÉ executive board.
She said deception was at the heart of the issue was deception, adding that she did not know if there had been a conspiracy or a mess-up.
It spoke volumes that RTÉ's head of commercial did not realise there were three barter accounts, she noted, following a statement from the broadcaster confirming the existence of further such accounts in addition to the one highlighted over payments to Mr Tubridy.
Ms Smyth said she and the other members of the committee were very angry that this information had not been given to them earlier to allow them to scrutinise the details. She added that it appeared the information given last week “was not wholly accurate”, which would compound the anger already there.
“I want to give those executives an opportunity to come in this morning to explain,” Ms Smyth said.
The public would be far more forgiving if RTÉ came out and said “we did this, we did that, in hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t,” she said.
Asked if she had confidence in the RTÉ executive, Ms Smyth said she struggled with the tenability of the board.
“My God, you'd be scratching your head asking yourself of these people, is it incompetence or is it a dysfunctionality?” she questioned.
Reflection
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty has said that there was a need for senior RTÉ executives to “reflect on their position” following the revelation of further barter accounts.
Mr Doherty told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that the executive board was “still trying to cover up” the matter, adding that the full information was not being made available.
“I think anybody who watched the two committees last week would be very clear that unless you ask the question, you won't get the answer, and you had to ask the question in a specific way.
“You could see even at the last minutes of each of the meetings, new information was being extracted by executive directors, and that's not the type of approach we wanted.”
Mr Doherty said he feels the executive directors could not be relied on to provide the information to the committees and the public, so Ms Martin should exercise her powers under Section 109 of the Broadcasting Act and send in a team to RTÉ to get the necessary information.
“The Minister can appoint a person or a number of people to go in there and look for any documentation that we want. The fact that we're relying on RTÉ executives to get that information to us and presented in a way, in my view, that is suitable sometimes to them is not acceptable.”
Mr Doherty said there are serious questions about the performance of a number of senior executives in RTÉ, especially in relation to how they dealt with this issue when it came to light.
“There is a need for now for four individuals to reflect on their position in terms of where they are in going forward with integrity,” Mr Doherty said.
Minister for Finance Michael McGrath also spoke to Morning Ireland about the matter, calling for full disclosure and transparency/
He said RTÉ needs to get to grips with this issue “as a matter of urgency”, otherwise the controversy will just rumble on.
“They need to lance the boil and the only way to do that is to be fully open with all of the information at their disposal, and then we can begin to move through all of that and set up the independent reviews that Minister Martin has confirmed, allow the forensic accountant to do his or her work and move on from there.”
There needs to be a comprehensive explanation about how incorrect information was given to the Oireachtas Committees last week, Mr McGrath added.
“It may well have been a genuine mistake, we all make mistakes, but you would expect the executive team to have been fully briefed and prepared before going before the Oireachtas committee, because they would have known that was not going to be an easy experience, and given that the barter account, the original one, was the very heart of the payments controversy.
“It was, I think, a question that was easily anticipated as to whether or not there were other barter accounts. It does raise the stakes.
“They need to come before the Committee today and just reveal all the information that they have and explain why the information last week on that particular issue was inaccurate, but the wider problem here is just this drip, drip of information that's been going on for the last couple of weeks.”
