RTÉ rejects claim made by Noel Kelly in opening statement to Oireachtas committee
And Tubridy Ryan Picture: Kelly Doyle Mark Noel
Ryan Tubridy’s agent has said that the scandal surrounding the under-declaration of his salary is “entirely a mess of RTÉ’s own making” and that Mr Tubridy has been made “a poster boy” for what has happened.
Noel Kelly told a hotly-anticipated meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that RTÉ “knew what they had paid Ryan”, saying that former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe had “set out the actual earnings for each of the relevant years correctly” in December 2019.
Yet, regardless in January 2021, “RTÉ made false or incorrect declarations about these same figures”, Mr Kelly will tell the committee.
He said the issue had been “an accident waiting to happen” given RTÉ had not given his company NK Management adequate notice before publishing its list of top earners.
“If they had done that, we would have had time to check the figures and avoid errors. However, RTÉ ignored our request for reasons which l don’t understand.”
He said that as early as March 2020 it had become clear that RTÉ “might be struggling to understand the correct accounting treatment for what they paid Ryan in 2017, 2018 and 2019”.
He added that despite his company having affirmed what the correct figures should be, nevertheless “their confused thinking returned and they published the wrong figures in January 2021”, something he said had caused “huge reputation damage to Ryan in the process”.
Mr Kelly said that, in his opinion, the figures published for Mr Tubridy’s payments in 2020 and 2021 last month “are wrong”.
“In both years they overstate the amount they paid Ryan,” he will say. He will say that the overstatement amounts to €62,536 in 2020 and €83,381 for 2021.
The agent also asserts that blaming former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes solely for the decision that RTÉ would underwrite Mr Tubridy’s contract with Renault “is incorrect”.
To this end, Mr Kelly is to provide a letter from Ms O’Keeffe in February 2020 stating that RTÉ would “provide you with a side letter to underwrite this fee for the duration of the contract”.
This would appear to directly contradict Ms O’Keeffe’s statement to the media committee last week that no decision to underwrite the agreement had been taken before she left her role in March of 2020.
“RTÉ has tried to portray the guarantee as a decision given late in negotiations on a Zoom call by Dee Forbes without the awareness on the part of the executive board,” Mr Kelly said.
“Clearly that is not correct. The decision was taken early by RTÉ and was known widely within the executive board of RTÉ.”
RTÉ has since rejected the claim "that an incorrect version of events was presented" to the Oireachtas.
It said in a statement on Tuesday: "For clarity, the claim relates specifically to an email that was sent by the former CFO of RTÉ to NK Management on 20 February 2020, which is being characterised as a contractual commitment on the part of RTÉ to underwrite the payments in question.
"RTÉ does not accept this characterisation. RTÉ’s position is that the email of 20 February 2020 formed part of the discussions and engagement between it and NK Management in relation to the proposed new TV and radio contract with Mr Tubridy/Tuttle Productions and did not comprise a binding legal or contractual commitment on its part.
"RTÉ’s position is as per previous statements: that, until the verbal commitment given by the former Director General during the call on 7 May 2020, it had not agreed to underwrite the €75,000 payment per contract year."
Meanwhile, Mr Kelly also said that there was “nothing secret” about the commercial arrangement with Renault which was arranged to provide Mr Tubridy with payments of €75,000 per year in return for a number of personal appearances for the company.
He said that he and Mr Tubridy had no knowledge that RTÉ was making the €75,000 payments via its barter account with UK company Astus.
“At the time, we had no reason to suspect that RTÉ might be trying to hide payments to Ryan. I am still shocked that was their intention.”
He will add that a letter from Dee Forbes to Mr Tubridy in 2020 guaranteeing no reduction in his wages for the duration of his contract “had no practical impact”.
Mr Kelly said that he appreciates the “seriousness” of the scandal, given it has been “hugely damaging to Ryan Tubridy, to myself, and to my business”.
“Ryan and I have attracted a horrendous amount of criticism and abuse in the past few weeks because he is such a high profile and successful figure in Ireland, and he has been made the poster boy for this scandal,” he said. “That is undeserved.”