Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Before we move on to committee questions, we acknowledge we received a lot of documentation from Mr. Bakhurst. Some changes are taking place and that is welcome. One important piece of documentation we have not received is the note from the meeting of 7 May 2020. We received a response on that. The first response we got verbally from Ms Paula Mullooly at a previous meeting was that it was legally privileged. I note that has changed since; it comes under client confidentially, in other words, legal advice from a solicitor. The committee feels this is important, particularly in the absence of Ms Dee Forbes’s attendance, because she was at that meeting with Noel Kelly, another person from NK Management and an RTÉ solicitor. In the absence of Dee Forbes, Mr. Kelly gave his version of what happened at that meeting. That was referred to and I have it here in an email from 19 April to RTÉ, with a short reply from RTÉ saying “Thanks very much”. In that, he confirmed that at the meeting, Dee Forbes, on behalf of RTÉ in consideration of the new agreement, said RTÉ guarantees its payments required to be made by Renault under the tripartite agreement and indemnifies Tuttle Productions - that is Ryan Tubridy’s company - in relation to these payments for the duration of the contract. That is simply what we got.

The answers we are getting on this are not satisfactory. We discussed this and the committee is not happy with it. There is obviously more to it than that. Mr. Bakhurst has been open with all of the documentation we have received so far. We are puzzled about this one. I mentioned to Ms Mullooly - as did another member - at a previous meeting that where RTÉ is claiming legal privilege, RTÉ executives have the right to waive that legal privilege. However, we now know it was not legal privilege rather it is client confidentiality. In other words, a solicitor - in this case, an in-house solicitor – was giving advice to a client, staff of RTÉ. However, that cannot be; client confidentiality does not exist here because there were two other people at that meeting who were with RTÉ. We know that now. I ask Mr. Bakhurst to respond to that.

In any case, even if Mr. Bakhurst still claims client confidentiality in regard to legal advice - that is what the notes are about - RTÉ has the right to waive it. Mr. Bakhurst said that recent events marked a turning point and he is operating with full transparency to the board, which I welcome and have raised with him a number of times, as have members. However, we are talking about restoring public confidence. That is the meeting where the deal for the extra €225,000 for the second three-year period was nailed down, if you like. We do not have the notes on that meeting. I ask Mr. Bakhurst to respond to that.