Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Much of this has been intense for everybody and I understand that seven hours of this is difficult. Our job is to recognise that the people who are the biggest victims are the TV licence payers and the other RTÉ staff who have been affected by this and were required to take substantial pay cuts. It is our job to ask these questions. I just want to make that clear.

At the heart of this is that it was stated publicly that everybody, including Mr. Tubridy, would be taking pay cuts at the time. Then we discovered that these payments were being made which were kept secret and which RTÉ executives have acknowledged were an organised deception. We also discovered that these payments were mislabelled as consultancy fees by somebody. Mr. Kelly has said it was nothing to do with NK Management and that it was done under RTÉ instructions, which is a little bit difficult to credit.

The other bit of Mr. Tubridy and Mr. Kelly's narrative, the one I want to concentrate on and which follows on from what Senator Dooley said, is that the commercial arrangement and the pay reduction that was publicly stated as having happened were somehow two separate things. To put this honestly to the witnesses, that does not look credible from the emails that are exchanged between Mr. Kelly and RTÉ during that early period in 2020. I have not seen all of the correspondence but the first mention in the emails of the €75,000 from a commercial relationship is put forward by Mr. Kelly. That is the first mention of it that I see. That first email on 16 January also states: "Terms and conditions of this: Underwritten and guaranteed by RTÉ". It goes on to say: "The fees above include the €120,000 owed to Ryan" and it suggests there should be "four less" shows and a "Reduction of radio shows". In other words, the negotiating position that Mr. Kelly was adopting on behalf of Mr. Tubridy was linked to the overall pay cut but then seemed to be insisting on things that would effectually mean the pay cut would not happen in real terms. Is that not a reasonable reading of what we are seeing here? In the negotiation then, there was a pushback from RTÉ over a lot of the conditions that Mr. Kelly seemed to be insisting on.

I might put this other matter to Mr. Kelly. The email of 19 February also refers to Mr. Kelly saying, as part of this negotiating process, "we had a meeting with our client", who is Mr. Tubridy, in the process of the negotiations. Mr. Kelly and Mr. Tubridy were discussing the details, according to these emails, of this back and forward of negotiations. This is in the emails that Mr. Kelly has provided us. I have not even had a chance to read them all but, on the face of it, that is what it looks like. I am genuinely trying to be objective and I heard what Mr. Kelly said but that looks like Mr. Kelly is pushing for everything to mitigate the pay cut.