Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Leanann an scannal faoi íocaíochtaí ceilte RTÉ do Ryan Tubridy ar aghaidh. Tá go leor ceisteanna le freagairt go fóill. Tá sé soiléir go dtéann sé seo i bhfad níos faide ná Dee Forbes amháin. Caithfidh go leor daoine ar bhord RTÉ an t-eolas atá acu faoin méid a tharla ag an am sin a chur faoi bhráid an phobail. Níl aon rud níos lú tuillte ag an phobal.

Yesterday, a week since this scandal first broke, RTÉ finally released some selective information about hidden payments to Ryan Tubridy. However, it skirts around the issues at the heart of this fiasco. It leaves more questions than answers. Reading the RTÉ statement, you would be led to believe that Dee Forbes was the only person who knew about this, but that is simply not credible. More than half of the executive board had knowledge of the commercial contract. At a time of pay cuts for workers in RTÉ and in a cost-of-living crisis when people were struggling to pay the annual licence fee, RTÉ created a sweetheart deal to portray falsely that Ryan Tubridy was taking a pay cut and created an elaborate plan to cover it up. All too often, that is how things in this country work for people at the top. RTÉ's top brass knew there was a separate sweetheart deal in place between RTÉ executives and Ryan Tubridy's agent, hidden from the public. This sweetheart deal involved Renault paying Ryan Tubridy €75,000, to be reimbursed by RTÉ through a separate account. Ryan Tubridy was to attend private events at Renault while RTÉ would pick up all the cost.

We now know it was the commercial director who negotiated the side deal with Renault. She was the person who agreed with Ryan Tubridy's agent that the invoices would be paid through the barter account. She organised the payment through the barter account, and none of this would be known if we were just to read the RTÉ statement. The fact is that RTÉ's executives knew the contract was being negotiated. RTÉ's chief financial officer, the director of content and the director of audiences all had some knowledge of these negotiations. Many of them knew about the commercial arrangement between Ryan Tubridy and Renault, bizarrely underwritten by RTÉ. They knew it was in place.

The former director general was responsible – there is no doubt about that – but she was not the only one with knowledge of taxpayers' money being spent without recourse to the board, the Oireachtas, the Minister or the taxpayer. At the heart of it is public money. We have got to get to the bottom of this and do so quickly.

Arising from the board's statement yesterday, we have absolutely no idea about what happened in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in respect of all the extra payments to Ryan Tubridy in those years. We do not know who cleared them, how they were made or what they were about. The RTÉ board has published nothing concerning these payments. If there is to be full transparency, the public needs to know about the payments. It is not acceptable that we are being asked to wait another month for more information to be released. This scandal first came to light a week ago. Therefore, this is not transparency. We need answers now. We need all the documents, all the arrangements, all the signed contracts and all the secret deals and all the side letters from the relevant time period published without delay. If RTÉ does not release all the documents and is not transparent, will the Taoiseach use his powers to request the Minister to use her power under the Broadcasting Act to send in a relevant person so all the information will be available to the public and so there will be full transparency regarding this scandal?

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