Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to first welcome all of our witnesses here today. What a mess. This matter is the topic of every conversation. All I am hoping is that over the next few weeks it will be put to bed but that will not happen unless we all put our hands up and start telling the truth because week-in and week-out more information is coming out where everybody is being blamed. It is about time we all put our hands up to state that RTÉ has 1,800 employees there at the moment and we must also consider them. What makes me very angry is that these are the workers who helped RTÉ get to where it is today. Over the past number of years RTÉ has been looking for additional crews and resources to help the organisation but all of these lies and backhanders have really left a bad taste.

Can I ask each and every one of our witnesses if they are fully aware that RTÉ publicly humiliated people years ago and sometimes even sent people to jail for not paying their RTÉ licence? Look at the position now where we have all of these white collar people sitting up here at the moment? How do they feel? Years ago, there was a big knock on the door, a person would come in and take the mother and father away and would put them in jail. Look at the position at the moment where hundreds, and probably thousands and millions of euros have gone missing, and everybody is getting off scot-free.

All we really want to know is where the money is going. Talking to the public out there, they are saying to me that we have a commercial director who does not actually direct any commercial dealings and we have a chief financial officer who does not monitor finances. As I said to our witnesses last week, if that was my own business, I would be out on the street and gone, finito. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Do our witnesses actually think that people out there are stupid? How could RTÉ hide this money? This was going to come out at some stage. This involved Ryan Tubridy, who was probably the best RTÉ personality over the past ten to 15 years and it was going to come out. Do our witnesses honestly think that people are foolish and would say that this might not happen? RTÉ has fraudulent invoices, off-balance-sheet accountancy and secret payments. There is something seriously wrong out there. I want to ask the witnesses present here today to please stop hiding behind their legal privileges, to stand up, be accountable, face the music, march on and be wiser.

I said here last week that I felt as though Dee Forbes was being pushed under a bus and I feel that even more today. A poll was done last weekend and the public was asked who was to blame in this. At the moment the public is blaming the witnesses here, the executive and the board. Some 73% of them are saying the board of management is to blame and only 11% to 12% blame Dee Forbes.

I know that there is a letter there at the moment which was submitted by Dee Forbes which seems to be pointing the finger at Ryan Tubridy.

I have a number of questions to ask the witnesses. Did anybody know about the understatement of these three payments years ago?

I appreciate that this is Ms O’Keefe’s first day to attend the committee. She was the chief financial officer, CFO, from 2012 to 2020. In fact, she was second-in-command to Dee Forbes. Her evidence to the committee will be very important today and her honesty will be very crucial. My first question to her is: Did the crazy salaries predate Dee Forbes?