The minister added that she expects both reports within the next six months.

Will these reviews overlap?

This newspaper carried the story yesterday of staff at RTÉ being asked to provide details of any commercial activity they have been involved with, for example, which may illustrate where the focus of each review may intersect.

Now, further ‘barter accounts’, similar to that used to top up Ryan Tubridy’s salary, have been discovered.

The exact employment status of RTÉ staff — the focus of the second review mentioned by Ms Martin — will almost certainly have a bearing on the first review. 

The interpretation of structures within the organisation will clearly be influenced by the legal relationship between RTÉ and its staff, whether those are full-time staff, contractors on rolling contracts, part-time contributors, or whatever other arcane arrangement is used by the parties involved.

Esoteric provisions of employment law need not hold back any examination of the culture within RTÉ, however. 

The performance by senior management figures at the Public Accounts Committee last week was eye-opening for many reasons, ranging from transactions involving the RTÉ barter account to the revelations about spending on clients, but the meeting as a whole exposed a deeply concerning looseness in controls and oversight at the highest levels in the national broadcaster.

Is this reflective of a culture within RTÉ that is not limited to senior executives, however? The culture of the organisation as a whole has now made it necessary for managers in RTÉ to get details of the commercial activities of staff, and if those details reveal conflicts of interest, then regaining the trust of the public — the strongest currency any media organisation trades in — will be even more difficult.