Mr. Ryan Tubridy:

I thank the committee for acceding to my request to come before it today. We felt it was really important to be here. I have always believed in the importance of public service. I was brought up that way, and I have great respect for the Oireachtas as an institution. I have come here, as members know, voluntarily, because I believe in the work the committee is doing. I do not say that in any other way than that I want to assist in every way I can. I appreciate there will be many questions so I will try to keep my opening statement as short as possible. I begin by clearly and unambiguously at the very outset this morning stating that I am truly sorry for all of this and for any part which I have played, be it consciously or unconsciously, and anything that has contributed to the debacle we are dealing with today.

I apologise to the committee that it has had to take the time to deal with this matter, to my colleagues in RTÉ and to my listeners.

Given the events of the past three weeks, there is a lot I wish and need to say, so I ask the committee please to bear with me. My aim is to help correct and clarify some very serious matters and I will be relying on my agent, Noel Kelly, to go through the figures and provide greater detail. I would like everybody here today to understand that the figures and statements presented by RTÉ over the past few weeks in respect of my remuneration have created a fog of confusion over what I was paid, when I was paid, what I knew and when I knew it. Full transparency and disclosure on RTE's part, I am sorry to say, would simply have avoided much of this. I am here to do one thing and one thing only, namely, to set the record straight and call out some untruths. There are seven material untruths I would like to address.

The first is the claim I did not take a pay cut from RTE in 2020. This is not true. I took a 20% pay cut from RTE in my 2020 to 2025 contract. It is as simple as that. I am obliged to present 205 radio shows and 38, as it was then, live two-hour episodes of "The Late Late Show" under this contract. I am an independent contractor. I get no pension or entitlements from RTE – that is the nature of it. Under the terms of my contract, I am allowed to do additional work outside of RTE – that is also the nature of it. I stress there is nothing morally, ethically or legally wrong with me or any independent contractor doing additional work for another client outside of RTE. To be clear, I took a pay cut from RTE of 20% in 2020 for each of the five years of my contract, at a cost to me of €525,000 over the length of that contract.

The second untruth is the suggestion my decision to retire from "The Late Late Show" was prompted by this whole debacle. This is not remotely true. I was not aware of any of this fiasco when I decided to retire from "The Late Late Show". I made my initial decision to leave "The Late Late Show" pretty much a year ago. It was very personal and was made in the heart and the soul. Around this time, I mentioned it to those closest to me, my family, my agent and a few others. They were very surprised, asking why I would leave such a show. I explained to them, and eventually brought them round to my way of thinking, that, among other things, I had left a lot of myself on the studio floor after Covid. I was burned out and exhausted. A lot of people in this country, as we know, are burned out and exhausted after Covid, having done much more important jobs than I was doing, but that is where I was coming from. I turned it over in my mind over a few months but by the time I got to January, I had made my decision and knew it was time to go. To make it abundantly clear, there is zero connection between my departure and this very raw situation of recent weeks. I informed management on 13 March of this year. I first became aware of this Grant Thornton review in May, some two months later, and even then had no inkling of the bombshell that was to come when RTÉ released its statement of 22 June.

The third untruth is that I was covertly or secretly overpaid by RTE. This is not true. I was not overpaid by RTE at any point. I fully accept I am very well paid - I understand that - but I was paid fully in accordance with my contract, which my agent negotiated openly, honestly and in good faith. There are no overpayments. There are RTE's under-declarations, on which we challenged them in 2020, and there are, indeed, RTE's over-declarations of what they actually paid me in 2020 and 2021. This has caused justifiable anger among my colleagues. I understand that, and we are going to deal with all that over the next six hours, or as long as it takes. The upshot of RTE's inaccurate declarations is an impression that I have been less than honest. This is not the case.

The fourth untruth is that I was aware RTE was trying to conceal payments to me. This is not true. I was not aware RTE was concealing payments to me. RTE acknowledged this in its statement of 27 June of this year when it stated Grant Thornton had made no findings against me.

The fifth untruth is that there was a secret agreement with Renault that I tried to conceal. This is not true but not only that, it beggars belief. Think about it. I had a separate commercial agreement with Renault – the basis of which was that I would make public appearances and perform roadshows and things for them. The work that I have done for Renault is all over social media. The suggestion that was a secret makes no sense.

The sixth untruth is that RTÉ's underwriting of Renault's payment obligations was a secret. This is not true. RTÉ's underwriting of Renault's payment obligations was not a secret. As the documents we have prepared for the committee today show, and as my agent will explain in more detail, RTÉ committed in February 2020 to provide this guarantee in the early stages of contract negotiations around my 2020 to 2025 contract. This is unequivocally confirmed in an email entitled "critical document", dated 20 February 2020 from Breda O'Keeffe to my agent. It was copied to other members of the executive board: the director general, and RTÉ's solicitor's office. Everyone in RTÉ who needed to know, knew. Members will find this on page 10 of the booklet of documents they have in front of them. Far from being secret, it was well-known.

Finally, the seventh untruth is that I did not ask RTÉ about its under-declarations of my earnings. When RTÉ released the 2017, 2018 and 2019 earnings, all on the one day, 20 January 2021, this is a question I did not ask at that time. This is a question I should have asked. I fully accept that but I will try to explain it briefly and as clearly as humanly possible. At the end of the 2015 to 2020 contract, my agent advised me that I was entitled to a phenomenally large payment of €120,000, that has been variously called a loyalty or end of contract, or exit payment. I did not invoice for that payment. I did not pursue that payment and I did not receive any payment. The documents provided to the committee bear this out. In my simple view, I had foregone that payment for €120,000 and not taken it, but because of how RTÉ reported that decision in its accounts, the narrative of the last three weeks has been that not only did I take this payment but that I somehow contrived to hide it. Let me reiterate: I actually waived my entitlement to this payment and I did not receive one cent of it. I hid nothing. I had nothing to hide. As the evidence provided to the committee today shows, my agent had already pointed out to RTÉ in 2020 that we thought the manner in which they were planning to account for my earnings in 2017, 2018 and 2019 was incorrect. We had understood that they accepted our position so that by the time they released the figures, I assumed that the chief financial officer, the financial professionals in RTÉ and the external auditors who had audited the accounts in these years, 2017, 2018 and 2019, had accountancy reasons for accounting for it the way they did. I would like to add that my company earnings fully reflect what I earned in these and all subsequent years.

I am particularly upset and disappointed about the decision and framing of the RTÉ statement of 22 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. I did not have the Grant Thornton report, which RTÉ had and which RTÉ acknowledged made no findings of wrongdoing on my part. I asked RTÉ to clarify that this was the case; it did four days later, after much of the damage was done. Pretty much all of the damage was done. I signed a contract in good faith. I declared my earnings and I paid every cent of tax. My employer has acknowledged that it has engaged in deceptive practices to pay me - practices that were hidden from me.

I am nearly finished. Please forgive me for going over my time. The result is that I have become the face of a national scandal. I have been accused of being complicit, deceitful and dishonest. I think the statement of 22 June was very unhelpful in this regard. The full truth was concealed. I take full responsibility. I cannot say it enough. I take full responsibility for not asking more questions back on 20 January 2021 when the figures for 2017, 2018 and 2019 were released. I take responsibility for that. I understand but, as has become abundantly clear and obvious in the last three weeks: this highlights the existence of two RTÉs. There are those who were involved in attempting to conceal payments and who were in a position to call me or call my agent and ask for our help in establishing the full facts.

Instead, they chose to hurriedly issue a deeply damaging statement on 22 June, which failed to include the full facts.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for the great number of decent, hardworking people in RTÉ. They are my colleagues and friends. I am very sorry for those whose lives have been made difficult by an incessant dripping of new revelations. I am thinking particularly about my radio show colleagues and friends who have had to be put through all of this for reasons not of their own making. They all work hard in RTÉ. I thank those colleagues who supported me through these last few weeks.

In closing, I thank the many people from across the country who have taken time to stop me on the street, decent Irish citizens who have taken my shoulder and elbow in their hands and said, "You will get through this." I have cards and letters, nearly a foot off the ground, from people who have written to "Ryan Tubridy, Dublin". I got them, and fair play to the postpeople in An Post. I thank the Irish people for that. I am hopeful they will see from my statement and appearance here today that I am determined to inform them of the truth and to demonstrate that I have nothing to hide. I am also hopeful that I will soon get back on air to do the job I love. Thank you all for your patience.