Ryan Tubridy made ‘a poster boy’ for ‘fiasco’ at RTE, committee told

A row has erupted between RTE and Mr Tubridy’s agent Noel Kelly ahead of two highly anticipated committee appearances.

Ryan Tubridy arrives at Leinster House, Dublin, where he is scheduled to give evidence before two committees, in what may decide his return to the airwaves. Mr Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly will appear before the Committee of Public Accounts at 11am, and the Media committee hearing at 3pm. Picture date: Tuesday July 11, 2023. (PA Wire)

RTE’s star presenter Ryan Tubridy has been made “a poster boy” for the controversy the broadcaster has been embroiled in, a committee has been told.

A row has also erupted between Mr Tubridy’s agent and the broadcaster on Tuesday over what level of knowledge there was at RTE to underwrite commercial payments to Mr Tubridy – with Noel Kelly has accusing RTE of trying to “distance themselves” from the decision.

Ahead of Mr Tubridy and his agent Mr Kelly appearing before two parliamentary committees in Dublin on Tuesday, the former chat show host released a statement to say he aimed to bring “maximum transparency” to both hearings and address “misinformation” that he said has been circulating.

Mr Tubridy addressed what he called “seven material untruths” about the controversy in his opening statement to TDs, and claimed that RTE’s figures and statements had created a “fog of confusion”.

This included him denying assertions he had not taken a pay cut, and had taken a 20% pay cut between 2020-2025; that the “fiasco” had anything to do with his decision to step down as host of the Late Late Show; and that he had been secretly overpaid – insisting instead that RTE had under-declared his fee amounts.

The hotly anticipated committee appearance of both Mr Tubridy and Mr Kelly – who represents several high-profile presenters and entertainers – comes after weeks of bruising revelations at Ireland’s public service broadcaster.

Scrutiny of governance and financial affairs at RTE began after it claimed that fees paid to its star presenter Tubridy had been under-declared by 345,000 euro over the period 2017 to 2022.

Evidence presented by Tubridy and his agent at the committee on Tuesday disputed that amounts due to him during the 2017-2019 period were paid.

RTE executives subsequently explained that the sponsor of RTE’s flagship Late Late Show programme, Renault, paid Mr Tubridy 75,000 euro in 2020 under a tripartite deal, but then pulled out of the arrangement.

Two 75,000 euro payments made to Tubridy for the years 2021 and 2022 were made by RTE as it had underwritten the amounts due to 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 that RTE said led to Tubridy’s fees from 2017-2019 being underdeclared. This report is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

Mr Tubridy told TDs on Tuesday that although he was entitled to a 120,000 euro loyalty or exit payment during that period, he had effectively “foregone” it.

“I actually waived my entitlement to this payment and I didn’t receive one cent of it. I hid nothing. I had nothing to hide,” he said.

In his opening statement to committee, Mr Kelly told TDs that RTE has attempted to “distance itself” from its decision to underwrite a tripartite deal, and that this was “a mess of RTE’s making”.

He referred to a letter from former RTE chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe, dated February 2020, which said: “We can provide you with a side letter to underwrite this fee for the duration of the contract (with Renault).”

He said the decision to underwrite the contract “was known widely within the executive board of RTE”.

Mr Kelly told the Public Accounts Committee: “To our surprise, Ms O’Keeffe told the committee last week that when she left RTE in March (2020) there was no support to provide that type of guarantee and no such guarantee was on offer.

“But she had written to us making exactly that offer a month earlier.

“Last week nobody from RTE here with Ms O’Keeffe challenged her when she said that.

“Since this controversy began RTE has tried to distance themselves from this decision.

“Effectively, they have blamed former director-general Dee Forbes for doing a solo run and for giving a verbal commitment to underwrite the contract on a Zoom call in May.”

He also added: “Ryan has been a huge driver of RTE’s successful commercial activities for the past 14 years.

“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. That is undeserved.”

In response, RTE has rejected the claim that it gave an “incorrect version of events” over an agreement to underwrite payments to Tubridy.

It said in a statement: “For clarity, the claim relates specifically to an email that was sent by the former CFO of RTE to NK Management on February 20 2020, which is being characterised as a contractual commitment on the part of RTE to underwrite the payments in question.

“RTE does not accept this characterisation.

“RTE’s position is that the email of February 20 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.

“RTE’s position is as per previous statements: That, until the verbal commitment given by the former director-general during the call on May 7 2020, it had not agreed to underwrite the 75,000 euro payment per contract year.”

Among the documents that have been submitted to the committees are Mr Tubridy’s 2015 and 2020 contracts with RTE, extracts from the financial accounts of Mr Tubridy’s company Tuttle Productions Ltd, and copies of emails to and from senior RTE executives.

On his first day as RTE director-general, Kevin Bakhurst suggested that whether Mr Tubridy returned to the airwaves depended on what emerged during the committee hearings, and he called for “maximum transparency” from both Tubridy and his agent.

Tubridy has not presented his weekday morning radio programme since the issues at RTE came to light on June 22.

Tubridy and Mr Kelly will appear before the Committee of Public Accounts at 11am, while the Media committee hearing begins at 3pm.