Comment: RTE needs to find its way back

The debacle at Donnybrook and revelations about RTE's top earner Ryan Tubridy pocketing hundreds of thousands of euro above his already massive salary has rocked the country.

The board of the national broadcaster said last week that between 2017 and 2022, Mr Tubridy received a series of payments totalling €345,000 above his actual published salary.

When the news first broke the former Late Late Show presenter issued a terse statement, saying he was not responsible for RTE's accounting systems, but just 24 hours later said he should have asked questions as to why tens of thousands of extra euro were landing in his account over the last five years.

“RTÉ’s accounting treatment and publication of payments made to me between 2017 and 2022 contained serious errors. While I have no responsibility for the corporate governance in RTÉ or how or what they publish in their accounts, when my earnings were published I should have asked questions at the time and sought answers as to the circumstances which resulted in incorrect figures being published. I didn’t, and I bear responsibility for my failure to do so. For this, I apologise unreservedly.”

In essence, he knew the salary details being published year on year bore no resemblance to his total earnings from the station but chose to keep quiet.

The full, grubby details of how these clandestine deals were struck will hopefully emerge at this week's Oireachtas meetings - the Media Committee (Wednesday) and Public Accounts Committee (Thursday) where RTE chiefs, probably without the now conveniently resigned Director General, Dee Forbes, will answer questions on the scandal that has engulfed the nation.

And answer they must, with the greatest candour and transparency possible for anything less will necessitate the complete dismantling of the entire corporate structure at the station.

This is not just some personal crisis for the presenter and a handful of top executives at the station who made these ludicrous 'barter' deals.

This goes to the heart of our national broadcaster and the people's ability to trust in it.

We live in a time when truth is under constant threat, when facts can struggle to keep pace with disinformation and lies. We need to be able to depend on our national broadcaster to be that voice of reason, of balance and impartiality, now we see them as taking us for fools. Like an independent media, both national and local, we need RTE to be fully trustworthy and transparent.

This week has shown it to be neither. And for the hundreds of journalists and broadcasters, researchers and producers and technicians far removed from barter deals, kickbacks (and rightfully so), this tawdry chain of extraordinary events must be extremely dispiriting.

That anger could be heard in the voice of Ciaran Mullooly, the former midlands correspondent with the station. He returned to radio this week to vent his anger at the blazers who threw thousands at the top earners while stifling salaries, shelving projects and skimping on equipment for those working in the field.

Mr Mullooly described the revelations as a “betrayal of the trust” of ordinary members of staff who endured repeated pay cuts during the years the stations top earner took in an extra €345,000 on top of his published earnings.

“At the time [I left] they were seeking cost-cutting in the region of €1-€2 million in the newsroom and they were looking at ways to cut costs.

“That happened four or five times in my lifetime there and, on every occasion, the payments to stars have come up and, on every occasion, we were assured their payments were coming down."

Journalists at the station have been left reeling by the scandal and many have said they feel tainted by the situation.

The hearings this week must move to completely isolate and expose those at the heart of these under the table payments. There can be no room for obfuscation by the senior RTE executives when the questions come.

Whatever enquiries, investigations and reports need to happen to get to the full truth of the rotten state of corporate RTE, the end result must be a watershed, one that allows the station to rebuild and reposition itself as the arbiter of truth and transparency.

The country needs a national broadcaster, pure and simple, it needs to find its way back.

‘The truth will set you free'.

(First published in Meath Chronicle on Tuesday 27th June)