Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785586#Comment_121785586

He takes no position on it due to potential conflict of interest.

Theres about a dozen other ministers including FG ones (aside from responsible minister Martin) to drum about it.

If asked he should respond with agreed Cabinet / FG position though.

Glebee

TV licence time again in my house, have received a few reminders now. It galls me to pay the licence with all the stuff coming out about RTE.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785605#Comment_121785605

But does he take a vote on these decisions in the cabinet and in the Dail?

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785658#Comment_121785658

I dont know. I dont think he should contribute to the debate (in the Dail, cabinet or internal FG) but it seems reasonable if all he does is vote the FG party line.

Cluedo Monopoly

Simon Coveney refuses to say how much money his brother Rory Coveney received when he left RTÉ | Independent.ie

Simon Coveney refuses to say how much money his brother Rory received when he left RTÉ

It has been reported Rory Coveney got a €200k package when he departed broadcasterSimon Coveney also insisted people should pay their TV licence as ‘it’s the law’.

The reported exit package of Mr Coveney, estimated at €200,000, is equivalent to 1,250 TV licence fees.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785114#Comment_121785114

She's a waste of space - utterly ineffectual on these issues. Grand when she's talking about artists and free to air sports stuff but otherwise not up to it.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785653#Comment_121785653

Don't bother. It's idiocy to fund these corrupt practices.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785682#Comment_121785682

So then he takes a position.

Floppybits

Collins owns a €3 million mortgage free property investment portfolio. Now I understand why he couldn't remember what his RTE salary is.

https://extra.ie/2024/02/18/news/irish-news/rory-coveney-rte

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785387#Comment_121785387

Or, more cynically, to make the cuts and be less influenced by the usual gang of hangers on and RTE dependents. Politically, it is getting out of hand and the unions in RTE are rather upset. However, they might find it difficult to get the same money in the real world so unless some thing really upsets them, there will be no strikes or industrial action.

Regards...jmcc

DrZeuss

Bakhurst has a bit of a problem now.

If he was involved in Coveneys resignation redundancy payment and Collins confidentiality agreement...well that doesn't look good.

But if he wasn't involved with either....that's even worse.

jmcc

Beaker has a good article in the Indo about how screwed up RTE was in reality.

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/fionnan-sheahan-ryan-tubridy-was-crucified-for-far-less-by-rte-bosses-who-lecture-on-integrity/a1026350867.html

It isn't quite the exoneration of Tubridy that the headline suggests. It raises some very hard questions for RTE's previous and current managment. Will anything happen? Will Dee Forbes and others ever appear before a committee without being compelled?

Regards...jmcc

Rubberchikken

Making tubs' involvement seem less is pathetic journalism. That writer changes tact depending on what way the wind blows.

The hr head Eimear Cusack has a lot to answer for too. Wonder how long she'll last.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121786717#Comment_121786717

Look at the bigger picture. People from the print media often appear on TV or radio panels. If a newspaper had adopted a highly adversarial position on RTE then a lot of that work would have dried up. One newspaper had its journalists effectively banned some Communicorp panels back in the day.

Tubridy is fair game now. While he was on an extraordiary salary, the payoffs for these RTE management people are obscene. As for Cusack, she seems like the next expendable RTE management type.

Regards...jmcc

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121786573#Comment_121786573

Yep, so much for the new age of transparency.

The Catherine Martin summons looks all too late and just for optics.

I might resign today and demand a years salary. Do I need to make a total screwup and cost the company millions first? Where does the law stand?

moycullen14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121767923#Comment_121767923

I agree completely with this. TSTM was undoubtedly flawed but at least they were trying something, however badly they implemented it. Remember 'I, keano'? You gotta think that was a very flaky idea but it was (IIRC) a huge success.

On the RT think, agree completely. I remember when it first broke, Mick Clifford, I think, asking 'Why?', why would you do this? I've never understood the thinking of Dee Forbes and others in risking so much for so little. Maybe they were in awe of RT? Or maybe something a lot grubbier and darker.

Brendan Bendar

It’s very simple, they took a punt on a disaster, but as they had been getting with ‘murder’ over the decades and it wasn’t their money….so…..hey…

Floppybits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787073#Comment_121787073

No problem with them taking a punt but it seems that they took the punt with no planning in place. Maybe it might have worked with a bit more preparation. In my opinion it looks like there was rush by Senior Execs to get it out there and cash in on it.

Widdensushi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121786696#Comment_121786696

Tubs was an independent contractor getting the best deal he could,I believe he was made a scapegoat,those crooks on the payroll firing hundreds of thousands at each other should be looking at prison time.

A Shaved Duck?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787120#Comment_121787120

I would'nt describe him a scapegoat, plenty of blame going around for this and he and his management team were foolish in thinking people would buy their excuses for collecting money not earned. He though he could blag his way out of this and it backfired on a grand scale.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121786573#Comment_121786573

The trouble with some of these exit payments could boil down to them being part of their original contracts; that if they are asked to leave or are being made redundant, they get an exit payment of 'X' times their annual salary or some other agreed nominal figure. If Bakhurst and the legal teams don't have enough ground to actually fire them, then an exit payment would be part of their contract and RTE would be liable to pay it.

Now, why RTE allowed such ludicrous exit payments, confidentiality agreements and large salaries is a completely different story, as well as not having adequate protections should such people bring RTE into disrepute, but I actually somewhat sympathise with the likes of Bakhurst who has inherited these issues and may be legally bound to give and honour those agreements which were likely already in place before he got there.

I have little doubt that the likes of Coveney and Collins decided it was best for them to take their money and run, whether of their own volition or once it was strongly suggested they should leave. Even O'Keefe where the Committee is saying that she would have a moral obligation to return the €450k redundancy she got. Not a hope will she do that if it was part of her contract and legal agreements that she would get it. She's pretty unlikely to ever get such a high-paying role again. Anyone think she's going to willingly return the money that is basically a huge chunk of her life savings for the rest of her life?

As with the salaries of RTE's biggest stars, RTE have spend years bidding against themselves and inflating their own salaries. Putting huge amounts of money into the hands of executives and chiefs on the basis that RTE needed them to survive, and when it turns out they do far more harm than good they get to walk away with huge exit payments because people like that will always have better legal protections in their contracts than everyone further down the chain.

kazamo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787120#Comment_121787120

Turbidy still holding on to the 150k for work never done, despite stating it would be repaid.

If Noel Kelly wasn’t so insistent on getting Ryan this money, we would never heard about any of this and Tubbs would be finished his days work already and probably planning a cinema visit in the afternoon.

Greed brought this into the light

gifted

Cant help but think that the  Minister for Media Catherine Martin has lost a lot of credibility over this. At every turn shes like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Rte executives have treated her with contempt as they know she will do nothing except call for transparency.

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787242#Comment_121787242

Excellent post…

Widdensushi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787478#Comment_121787478

Coveney got more than that to quit a roll that he didn't even have to be replaced in, that behavior seems to have been the norm.

Atlantic Dawn

Questions should be asked about whether the top 10 salary/fee presenters in the organisation have exit packages in place when their contracts end and if so why.

kazamo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787518#Comment_121787518

Tubbs was on half a mill for a banal hour in the morning and a “look at me, I’m great” tv show.

if Coveney wasn’t replaced so got redundancy ? Or was it, in his contract. We simply don’t know as the drip drip information feed continues.

Not a fan of either person, but after Wednesday’s performance, maybe closing it down is easier than reform at this point ?

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787242#Comment_121787242

I don't think KB is any different to anyone else there - he has been there before and knew well the craic that was going on. Remember - he wasn't "brought in" to "clean the place up" - his employment starting was a done deal long before the issues with Tubridy contracts and all of this came to public light.

On the issue of employment contracts - I'd love to know where these types of contract are in place in the private sector, never mind the state funded public sector. While these are all high level execs one would think that these types of contract and exit payments are not standard. There's also grounds in a lot of cases for voiding these contracts based on some of the actions undertaken.

Again, the line we have been spun is that "I've been told there are no laws broken here, so we have not referred to the OCF or the Garda Fraud squad" is simply ludricous. Those organisations tell you whether there is enough evidence available (after reviewing same) whether the potential for a law having been broke has taken place - and prosecute accordingly.

I don't like executive types tell me that "no law has been broken here" - particularily when many of the people who are supposed to answer questions don't turn up to answer questions.

To me it shows the PAC is tootless, and the OCF and Garda Fraud squad may as well be as well.

The sums of money being taked about are massive and totally out of kilter with any level of performance based salaries or contractually obliged terms and conditions in play anywhere else.

And as for the NDA's that have been signed around exit fees? Disgraceful. There's absolutely no reason there should be NDA's around these.

Never mind the sh1tshow that was the TSTM - the decision making here was shocking, yet you have people being paid to leave the organisation because of it?

hotmail.com

Be funny if Catherine Martin sacks the two of them today.

No wait, Catherine Martin isn't going to do anything.

kazamo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121787735#Comment_121787735

I used to work in a large multinational and those contracts do exist.

The norm was 6 weeks redundancy for every year worked with a cap of two years salary. Every employee there for a few years, knew that after 17 years, the redundancy pot stopped growing. In my time there, I saw a lot of people celebrating being let go, which years later I can understand but still find a bit odd.

The “6 weeks per year” was not unique to us as I have heard people in other business’ refer to it also. Large organisations don’t develop these benefits in isolation, they got the idea from elsewhere.

Re the fraud and laws broken…….you are in the wrong country to expect investigations into wrong doing actually leading to a confirmation of wrongdoing.

We allow people out of prison without purging their contempt of court and no one was convicted for the banking collapse. We convicted people for mis representing financial statements, so the banking collapse must have happened without human intervention. Regency trial had similar outcome.

We as a country don’t do justice, we talk about it, then forget about it.

I was hoping that we would have finished with the first stage of this fiasco : the revelation stage.

After 8 months, we are still finding things out piecemeal and the TD’s are gorging themselves on this publicity. When this first stage finally ends, the Politicans will then have to outline the future of RTE, its role, funding model, salary disclosures etc. Maybe that’s why the want to drag the revelation stage out until the next GE.