Mick Clifford: Exit packages for RTÉ executives, because they're worth it

If the pair of them were still around and had been watching the Oireachtas committee hearing into RTÉ last Wednesday, maybe skulling pints of porter in a west Cork hostelry, they might have had a reprise along these lines: 

“Those corporate types, they’re different from you and me,” Fitz might have said. “Yes,” Hem would have replied. “Because they’re worth it.”

In September 2019, RTÉ announced that Breda O’Keeffe was leaving her job as chief financial officer (CFO). 

It wasn’t mentioned at the time but her exit was being catered for under a voluntary redundancy scheme put into action two years previously. 

Such a scheme is generally designed to cut jobs by making the positions redundant. 

Ms O’Keeffe presented her boss, RTÉ director general Dee Forbes with a plan in which the CFO job would become redundant. 

It’s not clear how exactly an organisation the size of RTÉ would have operated without a CFO.

According to Ms O’Keeffe’s plan savings of €200,000 could be made by promoting from within to fill her position, which would no longer be CFO, but presumably called something else. 

At this point, it is not known whether anybody else interested in voluntary redundancy had the opportunity to present a tailor-made plan to the DG at the time or whether that was reserved for those at the upper echelons of the broadcaster.

Ms O’Keeffe’s plan involved her receiving an “exit package” of €450,000, which was more than four times the average lump sum paid out to staff who took up the offer of redundancy. 

And what about those savings? According to a review by solicitor firm McCann Fitzgerald, the savings never materialised. 

There was no promotion from within. A public competition was conducted to fill Ms O’Keeffe’s role and the new CFO Richard Collins was in place in March 2020 before Ms O’Keeffe finished up. 

Mr Collins has since left with his own exit package but we don’t know how much money was involved there.

It is unclear how heavy the negotiations between Ms O’Keeffe and Dee Forbes got, or whether, on behalf of her employer, Ms Forbes pushed back against handing out such an enormous sum, but that was it. 

The RTÉ head of human resources Eimear Cusack was the only other person notified of this package. 

So just three people knew the terms of this pay-out, the basis for which had been personally designed by Ms O’Keeffe.

None of that was Ms O’Keeffe’s fault. She just presented the plan. It was up to Dee Forbes to assess the plan and decide whether it was in the best interests of RTÉ to take it up and what the chances were of it actually working. 

We don’t know how quickly Ms Forbes realised the savings plan wouldn’t work because Ms Forbes is not available for answering questions. 

But despite the fact that the savings didn’t happen, Ms O’Keeffe was at that point legally entitled to her exit package, which was designed on the basis of the savings.

The new DG Kevin Bakhurst confirmed to Minister Catherine Martin this week that the size of Ms O’Keeffe’s wodge of money was in line with the design of the redundancy scheme. 

Why the package was never presented to the executive board of RTÉ, or even the overall board, considering Ms O’Keeffe was one of the most senior employees at the station, is not known.

Ms O’Keeffe did absolutely nothing wrong in negotiating her exit package. Who wouldn’t take a big wodge of money if an employer is offering it? 

A cardinal sin in corporate Ireland is to undervalue yourself. That lets the side down. 

After all, the person negotiating the exit package on behalf of a company may one day have his or her own hand out for the golden farewell and you wouldn’t want to be selling yourself short. Because you’re worth it.

Ms O’Keeffe wasn’t available to talk about her package before the Oireachtas committee on Wednesday.

Last June, when the RTÉ story was first dealt with at this forum, she appeared in jig time to clear up a misunderstanding. 

The issue over secret payments to Ryan Tubridy was being discussed, and she wanted to point out that she had not been part of that, had not signed off on anything that might be considered dodgy or unethical. 

At the time, she never mentioned anything about her own exit package which was known to just Ms Forbes and Ms Cusack. 

That didn’t render it a secret, not legally at any rate. Compartmentalisation is a valued skill among corporate types.

In the same week that her imminent departure was announced in 2019, things weren’t too hot at ground level. RTÉ was gearing up for what were called in media reports as “wide-ranging cuts”. 

These included a further redundancy scheme as well as proposed downsizing of regional operations and the possibility that Lyric FM would be axed.

There was also the issue bubbling away of bogus self-employment, the system by which various staff in RTÉ were not afforded proper employee rights. 

This was a cost-saving exercise that ensured it wouldn’t be too expensive to get the work done in the station. 

These staff members couldn’t even get an entry package that might reflect their value and work, while Ms O’Keeffe was looking forward to her generous exit package.

The politicians want her to come in and explain herself. 

It would be interesting to hear how she designed the savings plan that included her exit package and whether she was devastated when it emerged that the savings wouldn’t be made. 

Equally, the person who agreed to this wondrous plan, Dee Forbes, can’t make it in either to explain how exactly she ran the station during her tenure.

Meanwhile, Kevin Bakhurst is charged with clearing up the mess. If RTÉ was a corporation, dependant on the bottom line, it might well be wound up.

The problem is that the station is an important cog in a democracy, that needs to be supported and nurtured, and that employs a large number of people who are seething at what went on upstairs.

Corporate types are, as F Scott Fitzgerald might have had it, different from you and me. 

Once they arrive in the rarefied atmosphere of the upper echelons, whether they succeed or fail, whether or not their plan works out, they always manage to walk away with a big wodge of money. 

Because they’re worth it.