Claim Ryan Tubridy took 20% drop in salary has zero credibility - Alan Kelly
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RTÉ’s star presenter Ryan Tubridy has said he was finding it hard to leave the house as he gave evidence to a committee over claims the broadcaster misreported fees paid to him.
In an extraordinary committee appearance, Mr Tubridy appeared emotional at times, and slammed his hand on the table during his opening statement.
- Both Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly have issued strong defences of their actions in opening statements to the PAC. Watch Ryan Tubridy's statement in full here.
- Mr Tubridy said: "My name has been desperately sullied, I think my reputation has been sullied".
- He told Green Party TD Marc O Cathasaigh that he did seek advice from “a team of people” on how to deal with the crisis, and he assumed they were paid.
- Sinn Féinn's Imelda Munster asked Mr Kelly why he had written “consultancy fees” on the invoices he raised for the €75,000 payments for 2021 and 2022 and not put Mr Tubridy’s name on them. He said he was following instructions from RTÉ.
- Mr Tubridy suggested he has been “cancelled”, as his agent hit out at “horrendous reporting” over issues around his pay at RTÉ.
- Mr Tubridy told the committee he wanted to get back on the radio as soon as his could.
- Mr Tubridy said there was no connection between "this fiasco" and his departure from The Late Late Show
- Questions raised around why invoices were done using two different companies
The meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) dealt with a number of issues, including the Renault deal, the invoices sent by Mr Kelly in relation to it the impact the controversy has had on Mr Tubridy.
The PAC heard Mr Tubridy and his agent say they were not aware chat show sponsor Renault had withdrawn from the tripartite agreement.
In response to questions from Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe, Noel Kelly said “No, no idea”.
Mr McAuliffe asked Mr Kelly about the invoices and how the first payment made by Renault had been treated differently from the following two.
“The invoices were raised with you, you have a fiduciary responsibility as director of your company. You raised two – for the same three payments – you raised them under different companies, and you raise them for different reasons and invoiced them to different people.”
Mr Kelly replied: “We were under instruction, as you can see, ‘description from RTÉ’, ‘description from RTÉ’…”
He added: “Yeah, and they were sent under instruction to RTÉ, and we presumed that Renault were going to be paying this.”
Mr Kelly was criticised by TDs for his handling of the invoices for the €75,000 payments due to Mr Tubridy for the years 2021 and 2022.
“I think your companies have serious accountancy issues here, based on the evidence you’re giving here, because the fact is this is not how companies behave,” Labour TD Alan Kelly said.
“They get instructions to pay to an anonymised, unknown company for something that’s then referred (to) as ‘consultancy fees’, and under a contract that has been negotiated with RTÉ for private work outside and then switches from ‘Noel Kelly’ to ‘CMS’ for the second and third year. None of this is credible, it doesn’t stand up.”
Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy said that invoices are not a “creative” document.
“So essentially, both sides were complicit in what the chair of the (RTÉ) board said ‘designed to deceive’,” she said.
“We weren’t consulted about it,” Mr Kelly said, adding that no one told us at any stage of the nature of it.
He denied any attempt to collude with RTÉ to conceal the payments.
“I think the lack of credibility is on RTÉ’s side,” he said.
Mr Tubridy and Mr Kelly claimed they both thought the invoices that were paid from the UK-based barter account in 2022 were actually paid by Renault, given the first of the three invoices had been paid by the motoring company.
“That’s the misunderstanding,” said Mr Kelly.
Deputy Kelly also said that the claim that Mr Tubridy took a 20% drop in salary was not accurate "in real terms" and has zero credibility.
However, he called a statement released by RTÉ this morning "astonishing".
Noel Kelly told the PAC that the sole blame for the payment scandal lies with RTÉ.
It emerged that RTÉ had committed to underwriting a €75,000 commercial deal with Renault in an email in early 2020.
This is contrary to evidence from former Chief Financial Officer Breda O'Keeffe who said management was opposed to underwriting the deal.
RTÉ says the email doesn't constitute a legally binding contract.
Referring to RTÉ's underwriting of the deal, Mr Kelly said the relationship was between the broadcaster and the sponsor and so the guarantee was requested for if another sponsor came in to replace Renault.
"I asked for the deal to be underwritten because the relationship with the sponsor is with RTÉ", he said.
Mr Tubridy said he was always under the impression that the money he was paid came from Renault.
Mr Kelly was asked by Sinn Féin's Imelda Munster why he had written “consultancy fees” on the invoices he raised for the €75,000 payments for 2021 and 2022 and not put Tubridy’s name on them. He said he was following instructions from RTÉ.
RTÉ's Commercial Director at the time, Geraldine O'Leary, asked him to issue the invoices as consultancy fees.
“We acted at all times on instructions from RTÉ,” he said.
He added: “We trusted the process, why would we not trust the process?”
An email sent by an unnamed RTÉ staff member to Mr Kelly said: "Do not put any person's name on the invoice. If he sends it back to me then I will sort everything out."
Mr Kelly reiterated that the deal with Renault had nothing to do with Mr Tubridy taking a pay cut from RTÉ but was, rather, to "embellish the sponsorship".
In a tetchy exchange between Mr Tubridy and Ms Munster in which the host's charity work was mentioned, Mr Tubridy asked the TD not to "conflate someone who is well paid to a person with no conscience".
Mr Tubridy denied the suggestion by the Interim Deputy Director-General Adrian Lynch that it was possible that the presenter knew of questions being raised about the €75,000 payments before he announced his departure from the .
Mr Kelly told Independent TD Verona Murphy that there was no suggestion that Mr Tubridy would have walked from his contract had the €75,000 payment not been given.
He said there was no pressure placed on former Director General Dee Forbes to ensure that this payment was made.
Ms Murphy had asked Mr Kelly and Ryan Tubridy whether they believed RTÉ lied to the Public Accounts Committee at previous hearings.
“I think there’s been a lot of lies and that’s why we’re here. Intentional or not, I don’t know,” said Mr Kelly.
Tubridy said he hoped RTÉ’s claims about him were based on a “misunderstanding” rather than an “intent to deceive”.
Mr Kelly was further pressed on the invoices raised as a consequence of the initial tripartite agreement with Renault.
He denied any attempt to collude with RTÉ to conceal the payments.
“I think the lack of credibility is on RTÉ’s side,” he said.
Tubridy and Mr Kelly claimed they both thought the invoices that were paid from the UK-based barter account in 2022 were actually paid by Renault, given the first of the three invoices had been paid by the motoring company.
“That’s the misunderstanding,” said Mr Kelly.
Mr Tubridy briefly spoke of the impact this controversy has had on him, both professionally and personally.
"A lot of that trust was taken from me... Hopefully, people will hear what I say today and understand that a lot of what has happened over the last three weeks was not of my own making," Mr Tubridy said.
"For what? I spent three weeks watching people tell stories. I am not looking for sympathy now. I'm not looking for a violin."
Mr Tubridy said that he has become "the face of a national scandal; accused of being complicit, deceitful and dishonest," and this has been "my darkest hour both professionally and personally".
Explaining why documents were submitted to committee members just two hours before the committee appearance, Mr Tubridy said: “The last three weeks have been chaotic, they have been destructive, they have been beyond difficult, and all I’ll say to you is that we wanted to get things right today because so many people have been getting things wrong."
Mr Tubridy told the committee it is his understanding that he is still in contract with RTE and said he wanted to get back on the radio as soon as he could.
“I don’t say that with any arrogance. I just say it as an expressed desire: it’s what I do, it’s what I know, and I want to get back to my team and to the listeners and with my job because it’s all I’ve got.”
He added: “I understand that the amount of money we’re talking about is eye-watering, I’m not a fool, I understand that. But I haven’t changed as a person over those years, despite the extraordinary bank balance.”
Asked how he could rebuild trust, Mr Tubridy replied: “A lot of the trust was taken from me.”
In terms of restoring trust in RTÉ, Mr Tubridy said the organisation was off to a “good start” with the appointment of new director-general Kevin Bakhurst.
He added: “I think that hopefully people will see what I’ve said today and will hear what I’m saying today and they’ll realise that a lot of what’s happened over the last few weeks, I’ve been dragged into a mess not of my own making.”
Fianna Fáil TD Cormac Devlin said children in Ireland were asking why the host of the Late Late Toy Show was on the news so much.
Mr Tubridy responded: “My relationship with the children of Ireland is so important to me.
“I know that sounds grandiose, but actually it is.
“I want them to be happy and hopeful and proud to be Irish and read lots of books and just be wonderful young people. That doesn’t change, but what’s happened the last three weeks – it’s a frenzy.”
In his opening remarks, Mr Tubridy apologised to the Committee, his colleagues at RTÉ, and his listeners.
"I will begin by clearly and unambiguously stating that I am truly sorry for all of this and for any part which I have played - consciously or unconsciously - and anything which has contributed to the debacle we are dealing with today," he began.
Mr Tubridy said there are "seven material untruths" in relation to payments made to him and he would address each point.
He stressed that his decision to step down as host of had nothing to do with what has since emerged.
Mr Tubridy said he had begun thinking about leaving the show last year and came to the decision in January, informing RTÉ in March.
"I first became aware of this Grant Thornton review in May, some two months later, and even then I had no inkling of the bombshell that would come when RTÉ released their statement on June 22," he said.
The radio host said that he took a 20% pay cut from RTÉ in 2020.
He said it is untrue to say that he was covertly to secretly 'overpaid' by RTÉ.
Addressing his deal with Renault, Mr Tubridy said there was no secret agreement that he tried to conceal saying that the suggestion beggar's belief.
"I had a separate commercial agreement which was that I would make public appearances for them and the work that I do for Renault is all over social media. The suggestion makes no sense."
Mr Tubridy also said he waived a €120,000 exit fee at the end of his 2020 contract.
Closing his statement, he thanked his "hardworking" colleagues in RTÉ who he said have supported him over recent weeks.
In his opening statement, Noel Kelly, Mr Tubridy's agent, told the Committee that the under-declaration of his salary is “entirely a mess of RTÉ’s own making”.
Mr Kelly said that the abuse and harassment he and Mr Tubridy have endured since the story broke is something he would not wish on anybody.
Mr Kelly said 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”.
The agent said that both he and Mr Tubridy put their trust in RTÉ and had no reason to suspect that there was any effort to try to hide any payments, adding that he was "shell shocked" by what has emerged.
His agent, Noel Kelly has said the scandal surrounding the under-declaration of Mr Tubridy's salary is “entirely a mess of RTÉ’s own making” and that the presenter has been made “a poster boy” for what has happened.
Mr Kelly 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 former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe in February 2020 stating RTÉ would “provide you with a side letter to underwrite this fee for the duration of the contract”.
RTÉ has rejected the claim "that an incorrect version of events was presented" to the Oireachtas.
Scrutiny of governance and financial affairs at RTÉ began after it admitted fees paid to its star presenter Tubridy had been underdeclared by €345,000 over the period 2017 to 2022.
RTÉ executives subsequently explained the sponsor of RTÉ’s flagship programme, Renault, paid Mr Tubridy €75,000 in 2020 under a tripartite deal, but then pulled out of the arrangement.
Two €75,000 payments made to Mr Tubridy for the years 2021 and 2022 were made by RTÉ as it had underwritten the amounts due to Mr Tubridy — in what TDs were told was a verbal agreement made on a Microsoft Teams meeting in May 2020.
Grant Thornton is probing the amounts RTÉ said led to Mr Tubridy’s fees from 2017-2019 being underdeclared; this report is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.