Watch live: RTÉ appears before Public Accounts Committee
Senior executives are facing at second day of questioning at an Oireachtas committee on the controversy over secret payments to presenter Ryan Tubridy.
The Public Accounts Committee is meeting in Committee Room 3 of Leinster House to examine recent revelations regarding the transparency of RTÉ.
The meeting with current and former representatives of RTÉ and officials from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media led by the secretary general, Ms Katherine Licken, will examine commercial arrangements entered into by RTÉ and its presenters, including those underwritten by RTÉ that have impacted on and relate to the expenditure of public monies.
You can watch the committee live and read a summary of the proceedings below.
Chair of the RTÉ board Siún Ní Raghallaigh apologised to the committee for an “egregious breach of trust with the public”.
Ms Ní Raghallaigh said: “I am appalled as to how payments were recorded and presented in RTÉ accounts.
“What was the motivation here? It appears to me that this was an act designed to deceive.”
She also appealed for former director-general Dee Forbes to appear before the committee when she is able to do so.
Ms Forbes had declined to appear, citing ill health.
Ms Ní Raghallaigh said the national broadcaster has cultural issues around “information silos, domineering hierarchies that shun transparency and foster bureaucracy”.
She added: “This series of events has revealed grave failings in internal controls at RTÉ.
“Nothing less than an overhaul of such controls and work practices will now suffice, and the board will oversee this process.”
She also said there should be a review of the highest paid members at the organisation.
RTÉ's interim director general Adrian Lynch said the next boss of RTÉ will reconstitute the national broadcaster’s executive.
Mr Lynch also said the broadcaster’s executive failed in its collective responsibility over the misstating of payments to Mr Tubridy.
“I wish to state again our deep regret regarding what has emerged in recent days. For this serious breach of trust with the public, we apologise.
“It is a fact that the application of governance procedures at executive board level allowed for the partial and incomplete sharing of information, so that individual members of the executive either did not have access to information, or had information withheld from them.
“It is true that the Executive Board failed in its responsibility to act as a collective, and failed to ensure good governance in this matter.
“Collectively, owing to the siloed style of procedures at executive, and an overreliance on the prerogative asserted by the director-general, we did not receive a comprehensive evaluation of Ryan Tubridy’s contract in full, including the way in which the payments were treated.
“We acknowledge and accept this failure by those members of the Executive who were aware of the contract. I have spoken to (incoming director-general) Kevin Bakhurst last night. I understand that his first task will be a reconstitution of the executive board of RTÉ.”
The secretary general at the Department of Media told the committee that RTÉ needs to give a “full account” of all circumstances which led up to misstated payments to Mr Tubridy.
Katherine Licken said an external review into RTÉ will examine whether its current governance framework is “fit for purpose”.
“The review will also consider RTÉ’s organisational culture and its impact on levels of trust, governance, transparency and communications, and on changes which should be made.”
The details of the terms of reference have yet to be finalised.
