Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the announcement by the Minister earlier that a forensic accountant will be appointed, under the Broadcasting Act 2009, to audit the accounts of RTÉ, starting with the now-infamous barter account. At a hearing of the Committee of Public Accounts last week, we got an insight into how the €1 million-plus slush fund has been used by RTÉ's top executives, with €110,000 for a trip to the Rugby World Cup in Tokyo, Japan; €138,000 for ten-year Irish Rugby Football Union, IRFU, tickets; €26,000 for Champions League final tickets; a bus to travel a few hundred yards from a posh restaurant to a U2 concert at Croke Park; and, of course, trips to the K Club and golf outings with all the trimmings. A full list of the transactions from the barter account needs to be published and provided to the Committee of Public Accounts.

As Chair of that committee, I welcome also the Minister's announcement of two separate, parallel reviews into RTÉ to look at governance and RTÉ's engagement with contractors and their agents. That is essential. There is something rotten about the relationship between RTÉ and contractors' agents and the way they engage. I do not believe we have fully got to the bottom of that area, but we need to get there. At last week's committee hearing, it was revealed that a very significant MS Teams call, as I understand, took place in March 2022 between Dee Forbes and Ryan Tubridy's agent, Noel Kelly. The note of the minutes of that meeting needs to be produced. At that meeting, we have been led to understand, Tubridy's so-called tripartite agreement was signed off on. I believe those minutes will bring significant clarity to the matter. The committee does not want to see any attempts by RTÉ to hide behind legal privilege. Legal privilege needs to be waived and RTÉ needs to do the decent thing. The note of the meeting is central to our examinations and, indeed, the examination by everybody else who will look at the issue, and the Committee of Public Accounts should not be held back from seeing it. In the past two weeks, we have uncovered a commercial deal underwritten at a cost to the taxpayer of €225,000. Had it continued throughout the five years to 2025, as was planned, it would have amounted to €375,000, on top of the €120,000 in loyalty fees over the previous term, between 2017 and 2019. When that is all added together, there was to be a top-up of just under €500,000.

There has been evidence of payments having been concealed, diversionary routes created and designed for concealment to raise no fault, invoices to agents for consultancy services, and cock-and-bull stories to the effect they had not provided loyalty payments, credit notes or a secret five-year tripartite agreement. That would not be good enough in a private sector company, and it is certainly not good enough in the public sector broadcaster and cannot be tolerated. Ordinary journalists and other workers at RTÉ, as well as workers and families throughout the State who struggle to pay their annual TV licence fee, are rightly disgusted at what has been exposed. One mother from Tullamore, County Offaly, in my constituency was wrongly arrested and brought to Mountjoy Prison over a mistake regarding her TV licence. She had been saving €4 stamps for months and had collected €144, just €16 off the full sum, yet she was hauled off to Mountjoy Prison.

This is in contrast to how individuals at the very top of RTÉ were able to act, devoid of oversight or governance and thinking they would never be accountable, but for the Deloitte audit. How did it happen that this was not seen by internal audits before that? I fail to see how this was able to go on since at least 2017 without coming to light and without anybody saying "Stop". Judging by what we have been led to believe, you would nearly think all these senior executives were living in different countries and did not talk to one another, yet they describe themselves as the executive board. There can be only one board, namely, the appointed board, and everybody, including the director general, has to be accountable to that board. If we do not have that, we have nothing. We also need full transparency. There cannot be parallel or separate financial systems to set up circular or diversionary routes. Diversionary routes are used for concealment and nothing else.

As Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, I call for six further witnesses to be called before the committee, namely, Dee Forbes; the former director general Noel Curran; Ryan Tubridy; his agent, Noel Kelly; the former chief financial officer, CFO, Breda O'Keeffe; and the director of content, Jim Jennings. Invitations will be sent this week and I expect all six to attend. Their knowledge of what occurred at RTÉ for years is invaluable. If they refuse to attend, we will use our powers to compel them to do so, but they should do the decent thing as public servants and show up. I call on them to do that.

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