Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not know the Minister well personally but I have always found her to be fine. However, I have to say that I have found her to be very much a hands-off Minister. I said previously that when she equivocated in relation to people paying their licence fee that was a sign of how she was handling this issue, and it was not good. I also said previously at the public accounts committee that if a chairperson had not told me, as Minister, that he or she had asked for the resignation of the chief executive of a State board, he or she would not be the chairperson any longer. If the Minister had dealt with that issue with the former chair of RTÉ by asking for her resignation, I would not have blamed her. For me, that was a red card offence. I said that at the committee and I stand over it. The Minister should have been told and the fact that she was not told should have raised alarm bells vis-à-visher own officials and her relationship with RTÉ. She let that pass and we have moved on considerably since then.

The Minister weighed up everything and made a disastrous decision last Thursday. She basically poured petrol on the fire to a degree that we have not seen since the Ryan Tubridy appearances before Oireachtas committees. This is a really unprecedented situation but it is of the Minister's own making.

There is an issue here in relation to facts and what happened. Let us forensically go through the remuneration committee chronology and what happened last Thursday or, for want of a better phrase, "Prime Time" day. In relation to the remuneration committee chronology, we know that on 26 September, the board signed off on the new form of packages and how they were going to be dealt with. We also know that the remuneration committee met to approve the package for Mr. Collins on 9 October. On budget day, the Secretary General got a phone call from the chair, which is now disputed, during which the chair told her about that. On 11 October, Richard Collins resigned. Subsequent to that, there was a meeting of the PAC attended by the Secretary General, Ms Catherine Licken, the assistant secretary, Ms Tríona Quill, and the principal officer, Mr. Stephen Ryan. I was at that meeting and Ms Paula Mullooly, RTÉ's legal affairs director, said that new terms of reference requiring the remuneration committee to sign off on severance packages had been drawn up. She explicitly said that the new terms were designed to cover not only executive pay and presenters but also exit packages. She said the terms were signed off on 26 September.

There is one burning question here for me. If that was said at the PAC and departmental officials were all sitting there, how can anyone stand over the assertion that Richard Collins's package was not part of that? It would have had to be signed off by the remuneration committee, which would have to have been known by the Minister's officials. For me, that is not credible. It is also not credible, as the Minister kept repeating yesterday, that her officials were in daily contact with RTÉ. From 26 September until 28 November, when RTÉ forwarded all of these documents, and despite sitting at the public accounts committee meeting where I and other members of that committee heard Ms Mullooly say this, nobody asked a question. Nobody knew anything about the fact that Mr. Collins's package would have had to be under the new arrangements. That is not credible. It is not credible that they did not know. I previously had the privilege of sitting on the other side of the House and there is no way officials in my Department would not have known something like that. It is not possible. The only way the Minister would not know is if they chose not to tell her, which is even more worrying, but I will get back to that later.

Then we come to last Thursday, "Prime Time" day. The Department got a phone call at 10 a.m., during which the former chair confessed to the error of not reminding the Minister. I believe she actually thought she had told Department officials and they had told the Minister. The Minister was taken aback and at 11 a.m., the assistant secretary contacted the former chair to tell her of the Minister's concerns. Ms Ni Raghallaigh said she had told Ms Licken about this. At 2.30 p.m., the former chair expressed her unhappiness at the prospect of a letter she had been told was being sent to her and said she would have to consider her position. That was the moment when everything kicked off because now the race was on. The likelihood is that the chair was going to resign anyway after that threat. Indeed, anyone in that position would do so if he or she was going to receive such a letter.

How was the Minister going to take control of this? Ms Ní Raghallaigh called the assistant secretary to say there was a press query at 4.30 p.m. How was this press query manufactured? In all likelihood it had to come from some arm of government because no one else knew. The Minister was going on "Prime Time" later. The programme makers did not know because the Minister had to tell them of these issues. At 6.45 p.m., there was a call from the Secretary General to the chair telling her that the Minister had decided to issue the formal letter. Between 5.30 p.m. and 6 p.m., the Minister changed her mind regarding the prearranged interview and decided to go live instead. That happened because the letter had to issue. The letter was received at 7.36 p.m. and that would not have been possible if the Minister had been interviewed at 7 p.m. That is why the change was made. Out in RTÉ a member of the Minister's staff had to tell "Prime Time" staff about this, to ask this question, and consequently the "Prime Time" programme and time schedules likely changed.

The Minister keeps saying that the relationship was between her and the chair so I do not understand why she could not pick up the phone and ring her. The decision was made to issue the letter. Once the chair decided that if this letter was issued, she would be resigning, the orchestration had to be put in place in relation to what happened last Thursday night. That is how it reads to me, factually. That is how the chronology reads to me. That is the proposition that I see and any fair-minded person sees, and that is not good.

I also want to point out the things the Minister did not say on "Prime Time". She did not say that the chair had phoned the Department that morning to say that she had made an inadvertent error. She did not say that the chair claimed that she told the Department, through the Secretary General, in October of the previous year or that the assistant secretary had called the former chair earlier that day to inform her of this. I worry deeply about the Minister's relationship with her officials. I wish some people on the media committee had asked officials certain questions yesterday. They need to be asked some questions because there is an issue here. Either they were not asking pertinent questions about what was going on with remuneration packages when they should have been or they did know but did not tell the Minister. Either one of those scenarios is bad but the latter is worse.

The real concern here is that the Minister, in the context of the future of RTÉ, has put herself right in the middle of it. She was not out the gap last week but she was not far away. She was not the centre of attention. She got annoyed by reports in the media last weekend. Those reports jolted her confidence.

The Labour Party's argument is that this knowledge had to be known in the Department. It is blatantly obvious the Department either decided not to tell the Minister, or it refused to acknowledge it. The Minister was nearly out the gap. She decided to put herself into the middle of it and by doing so she has now put herself in a situation where it is a choice between her future or the future of RTÉ. That is unfortunate. It should never have come to this. At the Minister's meeting on Friday, how in the name of God can the board actually have confidence in the Minister? How in the name of God can a chairperson be appointed who will have confidence that the Minister will be able to deal with him or her in such a way that the chair will be able to do his or her work? That is the real question facing this Government, this House and the people looking at this today.

Ultimately, given the Minister's actions, the way in which this has been managed by the Department and the Minister's hands-off approach, it has now come down to a situation whether it is either the future of RTÉ or the Minister continuing at the helm of this sinking ship. Unfortunately, only one decision is possible, based on that analysis.

See this speech in context