Terry Prone: The questions Ryan Tubridy must answer
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The first thing Ryan Tubridy did was put his foot in it, right up to his knee. That was with the first statement.
The second thing Ryan Tubridy did was put his other foot in it up to his ankle. That was with the second statement.
The third thing he did was create a photo opportunity as counter-productive as the time that a British Minister — when Mad Cow Disease was rampant — fed a burger to his little daughter in front of the cameras.
After those three actions, Ryan shut up and lay low.
Which is what he should have done in the first place. Elapsing time has suited Tubs down to the ground.
It has allowed the story to go all over the place.
We’ve now got to the point where we’re talking about high-end flip-flops and reporters recording material in toilets.
The focus has shifted to the traditional hate figures: the Suits on the third floor of the Admin Building in Donnybrook.
In addition, every malcontent within RTÉ and every enraged former employee has come out of the woodwork to complain about HR, about culture, about how they were let go, and about the size of their team compared to Ryan’s team. Whinge Central, RTÉ, Donnybrook, D4.
Politicians have been complaining about the drip feed of information.
That drip feed has made Imeldas Munster famous and filled newspaper pages and radio shows.
Nobody expected Marty Morrissey to supply one day’s drip.
Nobody was glad when it happened. But a complex story generates continuous and unexpected headlines.
Then there are the sideswipes from the RTÉ Chairperson about losing confidence in members of the Executive Board, which does rather ignore the fact that at least one member of that board is too recent an arrival to be guilty of anything.
That member, and two or three others, could legitimately object to inappropriate guilt-by-association.
It’s a different world to that which would have faced Tubridy in Leinster House just two short weeks ago.
Anger diffusion has happened, ranging from flip-flop fury to annoyance over Toy Show the Musical. That musical was a mistake.
Not an inexpensive mistake, but a mistake. Mistakes are impartial – they’re made by as many good people as bad people.
Mistakes, even expensive mistakes, would not generate investigations into culture, accountancy, and almost everything else in RTÉ, were it not for the catalyst of Ryan Tubridy’s concealed payments.
It will be interesting to see if the Oireachtas Committee in front of which Ryan plans to sit next week can dig themselves out from under the documentation and complexity which flattened their performances this week. Can they get back to the central proposition of a man who evangelized for all staff facing up to difficult times together, and can’t have been unaware of the suffering delivered to poorer colleagues by the payouts, at the same time trousering €350,000?
He left colleagues under the impression that he was with them all the way.
But he wasn’t.
If what he took was handed to anyone on the national average wage, they’d get to 2031 on it. If it was handed to someone on, say, a Late Late Show researcher’s salary, they’d squeeze a full ten years out of it.
Ryan’s joined-at-the-hip appearance with his agent may allow a good cop, bad cop presentation, with Ryan confessing to being a bit of a financial eejit who handed everything over to Noel, and Noel shrugging that doing deals is his mission.
If the Oireachtas Committee members have their wits about them, they will listen, make notes and then gently ask a few questions.
No shouting or demanding yes/no answers. Ryan is a man familiar to and liked by most of the people watching, so treating him as if he were a politician or one of the third-floor suits would be a mistake. The questions worth quietly asking include:
- How could you betray colleagues who believed your “all in this together” line?
- Are you telling us that for five years, you were so rich, so above normal life, that you didn’t notice extra money, adding up to €350,000, landing in your bank account?
- How could you issue such an uncaring hostile nothing-to-do-with-me statement, as if your colleagues didn’t matter to you?
- What do you say to staff — like Late, Late researchers on €35k — who had their salaries cut, who really suffered as a result, and who now know you were secretly trousering twice their salary on top of your already big money each year?
- How could you work beside them in the future? Or maybe the question is how could they work beside you in the future?
If Ryan can give answers to those questions that would satisfy his hurt colleagues, then he’s home-free.
Noel Kelly has an easier row to hoe.
He’s the Michael O’Leary of agenting and if, as has been claimed, he has in the past said RTÉ management didn’t know what they were at, that’s not an unpopular stance.
A good committee member, or members, using sequential questioning, might, on the other hand, get some clarity on how one agent could get so powerful within the national broadcaster.
Not that Kelly necessarily gains by delivering such clarity, because, whatever happens, he will never be as powerful in the future.
It’s also possible that he was as mystified as the rest of us over how eager the Director General of the day was to meet him more than halfway.
A hit song a while back by country singer Alan Jackson arguably sums up Dee Forbes’ attitude to Ryan, exemplified by her comforting written pledge that he would never have to take a cut.
The Jackson Song, called “Tall, tall trees,” goes: