Presenter and his agent Noel Kelly facing questions from Oireachtas committee after three hours before PAC on Tuesday morning
Video highlights from the first Oireachtas meeting of the day. First up, Ryan Tubridy tells the Public Accounts Committee what it has been like to experience the coverage surrounding the recent payments scandal.
Ryan Tubridy has stated that it is his desire to return to presenting his radio show"as soon as possible" in the wake of the RTÉ payments scandal.Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor has asked why Mr Tubridy and Mr Kelly supplied their lengthy opening statements just hours before the committee meeting began.“It was unfortunate,” says Mr Tubridy. “It was a tortuous three weeks. There has been a humanity bypass ... we worked tirelessly to put this together. We got it in when we could.
Members of the public in the Doheny and Nesbitts' pub, Dublin, watching the broadcast of Ryan Tubridy giving evidence before before the Public Accounts Committee. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA WireJames O’Connor asks whether, given the state of the country during the Covid crisis, that it was wise to avail of a financial deal involving Renault.Kelly adds that the Renault deal was a contract for services which were delayed due to the Covid crisis.
The invoice for year one was sent to Renault. However, under instruction from RTÉ, the invoices were sent to a company based in London, Altus, from which the RTÉ barter accounts were handled. Mr Dillon asks does Mr Kelly accept the lack of credibility in dealing with a company you have never heard of in another country and raising an invoice for “consultancy fees”. Mr Kelly adheres to the line that he followed RTÉ instructions and says his company is a small one.
Ms Murphy asked whether Mr Kelly believes RTÉ “lied” to the Oireachtas committee during previous hearings. Mr Kelly says: “There have been a lot of lies, intentional or not, I don’t know.”Noel KellyIndependent TD Verona Murphy has, again, asked if there was a connection between Ryan Tubridy’s departure as Late Late Show host and looming financial disclosures.
He said he is “not looking for sympathy or a violin”, while Mr Kelly said there has been “such horrendous, horrendous reporting” on the topic leading to Mr Tubridy being thrown under the bus. Ms O’Leary has previously said she could not remember who first suggested this, but that it may well have been a conversation “with me and the director general”.Sinn Féin’s John Brady TD asks Ryan Tubridy if his resignation as host of The Late Late Show was linked to looming disclosures over his pay.
“You know, that sounds grandiose. But actually it is one thing to be happy and hopeful and proud to be Irish and read lots of books and just wonderful young people.
Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster honed in on the relationship between Tubridy’s diminishing fees from RTÉ, the tripartite agreement and payments from Renault – questioning whether the deal was to offset the fee coming down. Mr Tubridy said he did get support from a team, including crisis communications. Asked by Mr Ó Cathasaigh if this advice was to give documents late, Mr Tubridy says it was not.
Mr Ó Cathasaigh has asked Mr Tubridy that it is difficult to reconcile the idea that the Renault payment is a completely separate arrangement when it formed part of the contract. She accepts Mr Tubridy has done a lot of work for charity but again argues that RTÉ essentially underwrote all these payments.
They are claiming serious damage done to them by how the broadcaster has handled matters. It is a striking intervention, and the fallout will surely be significant. Mr Kelly is now dealing with questions about the €75,000 guarantee that RTÉ would pay if the sponsor did not continue with paying. Mr Kelly says he was informed by RTÉ’s legal office on May 26 that the auditor Grant Thornton was examining these transactions in relation to the invoices for €75,000.Analysis: Documents shed new light on the €120,000 understatement of Ryan Tubridy’s earningsNew light is shone on the €120,000 understatement of Ryan Tubridy’s earnings from 2017 to 2019 by documents and commentary published this morning by his agent Noel Kelly.
In an exchange of emails between Kelly’s company and RTÉ in early 2020 – discussing the terms of the agreement on ending the old contact – Kelly’s side struck out the RTÉ proposal on this issue. This proposal was to “set off” this €120,000 “against the original contracted service set out in the settlement but not sought by RTÉ or provided by the presenter during the contract term”.
Noel Kelly has said that the idea for a €75,000 annual contract with a commercial company for Ryan Tubridy came from RTÉ and not from his company or from Ryan Tubridy. Mr Kelly has told the committee: “We trusted RTÉ. It's not a start-up with opaque funding and a chequered past or a record for dodgy financial dealings. It’s a national institution 100 years old, with a massive business turnover of over €350,000.”
He is scathing in his criticism of RTÉ:” I am particularly upset and disappointed about the decision and framing of the RTÉ statement of 22nd June which inextricably linked my name to this whole fiasco. My name was mentioned 15 times in that statement, and I was not consulted once.“My employer has acknowledged that it has engaged in deceptive practices to pay me- practises that were hidden from me.
There is a clear emotional strain in Ryan Tubridy’s voice. He goes through the second “untruth” now, saying his decision to leave The Late Late Show was not prompted by what he describes as “this debacle” but that he took the decision over a year ago, after feeling “burnt out and exhausted” by Covid.
Now he moves to the seventh “untruth” that he did not ask RTÉ about their under-declaration of his earnings. In the next sentence he accepts: “This is a question I did not ask at that time, and one I should have asked. I fully accept that.” In a scathing summation of RTÉ, he said: “My employer has acknowledged that it has engaged in deceptive practices to pay me- practises that were hidden from me. The result? I become the face of a national scandal; accused of being complicit, deceitful and dishonest ... The full TRUTH was concealed”.
“RTÉ's position is as per previous statements: that, until the verbal commitment given by the former Director General during the call on 7 May 2020, it had not agreed to underwrite the €75,000 payment per contract year.”Political Correspondent Harry McGee reports on Ryan Tubridy’s opening statement, where he hits back at what he claims have been seven “untruths”.
“There are those who were involved in attempting to conceal payments and who were in a position to call me or my agent and ask for our help in establishing the full facts. Mr Tubridy disputes, firstly, that he did not take a pay cut from RTÉ in 2020. “I took a 20 per cent pay cut from RTÉ in my 2020-2025 contract. That’s it. I took a 20 per cent pay cut from RTÉ. I am obliged to do 205 Radio shows and 38 live 2-hour Late Late Shows under this.
“Bizarrely, the figures they declare for both 2020 and 2021 are wrong. In both years they overstate the amount they paid Ryan,” his opening statement said. Kelly claims RTÉ's revised figures overstated its payments to Tubridy by €62,536 in 2020 and €83,381 in 2021.In the email in question, provided to committee members, Breda O’Keeffe, then RTÉ chief financial officer, wrote to Noel Kelly following a meeting about Tubridy’s contract negotiations.
The former Late Late Show host will state RTÉ committed to guarantee the payments “in the early stages of contract negotiations”.
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