RTÉ needs to adopt a 'warts and all approach' to investigating Tubridy payments – McGrath

Olivia Kelleher

Minister for Finance Michael McGrath has warned that RTÉ cannott "hold anything back" and needs to be put all the "relevant information" on the table about the deal it made with Ryan Tubridy.

Speaking in Cork, Mr McGrath urged RTÉ to be as open and transparent as possible.

"Those are questions which have yet to be answered, and I do think need to be urgently answered by RTÉ. We haven't seen RTÉ yet meet the standard of full openness and transparency.

"It is hard to believe that they don't have the information. A proper trawl through the records would reveal essentially what happened here.

"There seems to be lots of people with bits of information, but nobody able to tell the whole story.

"Those who have more information are duty bound to come before the relevant committees to tell their story because we have to put this jigsaw together, and so far there are gaps, the information is incomplete."

Mr McGrath stressed that Ireland has "established processes in place" for considering whether there has been a breach of accountancy rules or company law matters at RTÉ.

"I think we should just allow the authorities concerned to consider whether there is sufficient evidence for them to become involved in this matter.

"But in the first instance I think we still have a journey to go to get all the answers that are needed. I think the only way through this for RTÉ is to put all of the information on the table and just reveal everything."

Mr McGrath added that RTÉ made a "very bad decision" to enter in to this pay arrangement with Ryan Tubridy.

"It would appear that nobody shouted ‘stop’ for a number of years. I understand that the Media committee, and indeed the Public Accounts Committee, have further questions that they will want to have answered, so I think we need to allow that process to take its course.

"But they need to put all of the relevant information on the table, not hold anything back warts and all. It is the only way they will be able to eventually move on.  I would ask them to be as open and transparent as possible because there is a lot of public concern about what has emerged, a lot of information was provided over the course of nine hours of committee hearings over two days."

Mr McGrath said some questions undoubtedly remain unanswered including fundamentally how did this arrangement in relation to Ryan Tubridy’s fees get designed, how did it come in to being in the first place?

"Then the way in which it was reported in the accounts….how it was accounted for internally? And why was it for a number of years his actual earnings were not accurately reported in the published figures?" he said.