General Irish politics discussion thread

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120782365#Comment_120782365

Why?

What specific acts have the Board, now not RTE, but specifically the Board, committed that requires their resignation?

Put any hysterical hyperbolic reactions aside, and address the actions of the Board that contributed to the scandal?

As far as I can see, the following occurred:

(1) The Board were deceived/left in the dark by the Executive

(2) The Auditors appointed by the Board, drew an issue to the attention of the Audit and Risk Committee

(3) The Audit and Risk Committee decided correctly to appoint Grant Thornton to investigate the issue

(4) On receipt of the investigation findings, the Board asked the CEO to resign, and when that didn't happen proceeded to take disciplinary action.

All of the above is fully consistent with the Board doing its job.

So other than the "off with their heads" reaction of the mob, what reason is there for seeking the firing of the Board?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120782967#Comment_120782967

You are clearly not listening to the PAC meeting.

I can't itemise the financial mis-mangaement that has been uncovered here.

Suffice to say on Number 2 of your list alone, several members of the board have been exposed as totally failing in their duties and oversight roles and were active parties to the deception that took place and the use of what was basically a hidden slush fund by their failure to ask questions.

The Chair's failure to inform the Minister fully is a resigning matter on it's own.

There's loads more reasons too. As one member of PAC described it, it's the most bizarre catalogue of events to come before PAC ever.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120783052#Comment_120783052

So that I am clear then, can you tell me exactly who you think the Minister should fire?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120783115#Comment_120783115

I think there are key members of the Executive and Board who have to go.

• Adrian Lynch – Interim Deputy Director General
• Geraldine O’Leary – Director of Commercial
• Paula Mullooly – Director of Legal Affairs
• Rory Coveney – Director of Strategy
• Richard Collins – Chief Financial Officer
• In terms of the RTÉ Board, the representatives are:
• Siún Ní Raghallaigh – Chairperson of the Board
• Anne O’Leary – Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee
• Robert Shortt – Member of the Audit and Risk Committee and RTÉ staff representative on the Board.
• Dr PJ Matthews -Board Member

Those in bold have shown themselves to be, at worst, not telling the truth or at best incompetent and totally failing in their roles duties. And the PAC meeting isn't over yet.

FrancieBrady

It's emerging now that the slush/barter fund was sending RTE board and executive members and their spouses on trips around the world but nobody on the board or in the executive, bar the DG, knew about this barter fund or thought to ask where the money was coming from, while meanwhile they were pleading for more money from the taxpayer.

Are they have having a laugh here? They all have to stand down or be sacked.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120783212#Comment_120783212

I kind of guessed you didn't understand the legalities or what happened.

Firstly, the Minister has no power over the Executive Board, they are employees of the company and the CEO is the one who can decide whether or not to take disciplinary action against them, up to and including dismissal. You have probably missed the bit where the incoming CEO has said that the Executive Board will have to be reconstituted. If there aren't sufficient grounds for him firing those mentioned, he certainly will move them sideways (you will probably claim this as a copout because you want to trample all over the human rights of the employees).

Secondly, yes, the Chair didn't tell the Minister the CEO was being disciplined, but that has been explained. Other than that, as I explained in my previous post, the Board discovered this issue through doing their job!! You want to fire the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee for doing her job in uncovering wrongdoing!! I suppose you want to fire every Garda who investigates a crime as well!!!

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120783784#Comment_120783784

Fair enough, I am not a legal expert and I don't really care who does the sacking or is who responsible for it.

What we heard today is just an obscenity of lies, waste, possible fraud and mindblowing incompetence.

A CFO who doesn't know what his salary is? Not asking what a credit note was for? Accepting that an agent was asking for 75,000 in consultancy fees to advise RTE on how to deal with agents, without asking questions? A slush fund being used for freebies for all of them and their spouses and he never asked where the money was coming from?

Come on, games up here. You want to stand over it go ahead, you'll be one of a tiny minority.

RoamingDoc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120783212#Comment_120783212

This is ridiculous. The chair of the audit and risk committee is the one executive who we know definitely did the job properly. There is absolutely no grounds to criticise her, nevermind remove her.

rock22

I will preface my remarks by saying that I believe RTE executive and boards have quite a lot of questions to answer. But, I think one thing is clear from the PAC session yesterday, and that is the the electorate were very wise in not giving politicians additional powers in these committees.

The behaviour of some of the members of the committee coupled with their lack on understanding of some of the answers given, makes many of them wholly unsuitable to such an inquisitorial role. Between personal attacks on the CFO asking for resignation of the Acting DG and telling the chair that she would be sacked if the questioner was the line manager, this meeting had all the hall marks of a kangaroo court and non of a fact finding exercise.

Dee Forbes, Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly would be foolish to put themselves in from of such a committee. The result is that we are likely to never find out fully what happened.

I will add, that i think that Wednesdays meeting managed to elicit most of the information we have in a far more business like manner.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120785328#Comment_120785328

I disagree.

The very function of that department is to be aware of everything going on at the station.

As well as the plan to decieve, people were dipping into this barter/slush account to fund over a million in trips and freebies...yet it was only discovered in March?

Seems to me and a lot of others (the 3 panelists on Prime Time last night, one an expert in governance) that the Audit and Risk committee was sound asleep at the wheel.

FF's Timmy Dooley was calling this expenditure out in 2019 yet nobody in the Executive or Board thought we better have a look at where this money is coming from?

And all the info is not in the public domain yet either, do you think it is going to get better or worse for the Executive and Board?

rock22

@FrancieBrady "I disagree.

The very function of that department is to be aware of everything going on at the station."

No it is not. But lets look at the facts

The Auditors brought the matter to the attention of the chair of the ARC on March 16th/17th . It was brought to the full committee within a week and within two weeks was brought to the full board. Agreement was sought and received from the board to have forensic accountants examine the issue and terms of reference agreed by beginning of April.

It is hard to see how this subcommittee could have reacted any faster.

There is a lot wrong with RTE. In my opinion there needs to be a ring fence put around presenters and the commercial division. But , from the evidence we have, the DG decided to top up RT salary without having approved finance to do that, hence the use of the barter account. Deloitte have to be praised for finding these invoices, amongst many transaction on that account, and pursuing the matter.

But, as I have already said, if I were DF or RT , or NK, I would not appear before the PAC because it is clear from yesterdays session that the focus of members is to attach and humiliate the witnesses rather than to elicit what actually happened. That the chair allowed that to continue , even insisting that Collins answer about his salary when there was already an agreement to publish all salaries, was just part of that attack. Whatever one might think of the RTE executives , the role of the committee was to finds out the facts, not to attack and demand resignations from the executives or the chair.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120785743#Comment_120785743

The very function of that department is to be aware of everything going on at the station."

No it is not. But lets look at the facts

ARC's duties from it's Terms of Reference

4. Duties The duties of the committee are as follows:

4.1 Financial Statements

a) To review and monitor the integrity of the annual Group Financial Statements and submit a recommendation to the Board, focusing particularly on:

- changes in accounting policies and practices

- major judgemental areas

- adequacy and completeness of disclosures

- significant adjusted or unadjusted audit differences

- the going concern assumption

- compliance with accounting standards

- compliance with legal requirements

- consistency of other information presented alongside the financial statements (e.g. the Director-General’s report) b) To review, prior to publication, any formal announcements relating to RTÉ’s financial performance. 

Under those terms they were asleep at the wheel Rock.

Audit-Risk-Committee-T-of-R-Sept.-2022.pdf (rte.ie)

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120783879#Comment_120783879

Where did I say I want to stand over it?

Address my points, which were that the Audit and Risk Committee and the Board have done their job in investigating potential wrongdoing. Do you accept that?

I am not the only one to point out how wrong you are on that count.

I have also updated you on the remarks of the incoming CEO, who has already committed to addressing the issue of the Executive Board, something which is only within his competence.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120785769#Comment_120785769

Eh, it was the Audit and Risk Committee who uncovered the slush fund, despite having been misled or uninformed (delete as appropriate) by members of the Executive Board. The Audit and Risk Committee did their job.

There has been a persistent them coming from the mob recently seeking that those who do their job and uncover wrongdoing should also be fired for not finding it sooner. That is a very very dangerous path and it creates an incentive not to uncover wrongdoing as you will lose your job. I want that Audit and Risk Committee Chair to be appointed to some more organisations, she did a great job, for a part-time Board member.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120785975#Comment_120785975

I don't agree they did their job until lately.

This was completely missed by them when they had the remit and powers to discover. The outside auditors had no more powers or access and compellability than they had.

And I am not the only one saying that.

An expert on governance called them out on Prime Time last night, so I will defer to that expert opinion rather than some random people on the internet.

I would also say the jury is out on your contention that the government can do nothing about the Executive board as a member of FG claimed on the same programme that the government Minister responsible can stand down the board and send in an outside individual to run RTE.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786024#Comment_120786024

Yes, they can stand down the Board, but not the Executive Board. I have already explained that the Executive Board can't be fired by the Minister. The terminology is confusing you, and you are mixing the Board with the Executive Board. Quite possible the FG member on RTE is similarly confused.

Some "expert" on the telly says something and you believe them. Why don't you read the legislation and figure it out for yourself. The "Executive Board" called themselves that in another example of their ego running away with themselves.

The Audit and Risk Committee and Deloittes did their job and uncovered wrongdoing. At least three posters have pointed out that you calling for the head of the Audit and Risk Committee is ridiculous.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786024#Comment_120786024

The audit and risk committee of any board is just a few people - very senior people, it is true, but they are very few. They don't have any independent investigatory powers or resources; they are reliant on the information they are given; they have no means of verifying it themselves. Plus, that's not their job. So, the notion that because they didn't discover this earlier, therefore they failed, makes little sense.

What we need to know (if we want to make a judgement about this) is things like what questions did the audit committee ask? Did they ask the right questions? Were they given accurate truthful answers? What discussions did they have with the auditors? Etc. We don't know the answers to those questions and, since I didn't watch the PAC proceedings, I don't know whether those questions were even discussed there.

The auditors, more than the audit and risk committee, might be in a more embarrassing position, since they do have the power, and the resources, to examine the original records and accounts in some detail and to form a view as to whether they are being properly kept, and whether they show a true and fair view of RTE's affairs. It's the auditors, more than the audit and risk committee, who should be the first to discover any accounting improprieties.

But, again, if improprieties don't come to light for some time, it doesn't necessarily follow that the auditors are at fault. Transactions may have been undertaken that were not recorded, or some of the records may have been withheld from the auditors — as in, a company could keep certain records and simply never tell the auditors that those records exist. It's difficult to sustain this in the long term; sooner or later there will be consequential discrepancies in the accounts the auditors do see, and then the whole thing comes to light. But that can take time.

It's reasonable to ask why this particular matter didn't come to light for so long. But, while fault may lie with the audit and risk committee, or it may lie with the auditors, it may not. We don't know yet. And, to be honest, I don't think the PAC committee, however well run, is necessarily the most effective or efficient mechanism for bringing that to light. I'm inclined to think the best thing they can do (if RTE's own board doesn't do it) is commission an independent examination by a team of forensic accountants.

rock22

I think now , that there is a real danger that the PAC will race off in a different direction, carrying out a root and branch review of RTE. Not what they should be getting involved in. They need to stay focused on what happened regarding these invoices and the payments to RT vis NKM

Like most people, the barter account is totally new to me. But, from evidence within the industry, such accounts are the norm. Examining twenties years of transaction is nothing more than a trawling exercise which could take months if not years and is totally irrelevant to how RTE broke its' own commitment to agree pay cuts and used under the table payments to the highest earner. It is clear that the DG, either alone or with other, bypassed controls to ensure RT got extra payments. At a time when RTE was asking for more money.

Regarding the ARC, the terms

4.1 Financial Statements

a) To review and monitor the integrity of the annual Group Financial Statements and submit a recommendation to the Board, focusing particularly on:

is exactly what they did. They raised the issue brought to their attention with the full board within days. There are plenty of people in RTE who clearly allowed this state of affairs to arise, including RT himself who asked for extra payments when others were taking pay cuts, but , so far, the ARC seems to be one subcommittee that did work as expected.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786203#Comment_120786203

is exactly what they did.

Eventually. They had the remit to discover this much earlier.

If they didn't know that the account was being used to fund trips and freebies and that there were unquestioned invoices for 'consultancy fees' etc then I cannot see how they did their job whether there was 20 or 3 on the committee.

There was a stink raised about this 'slush' fund in the media in 2019, and you are telling us nobody at any level, ARC included, asked where the money was coming from or what was going on with the account?

Beggars belief tbh.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786188#Comment_120786188

The use of the barter account appears to be designed to hide issues from the auditors. The problem arose when Renault defaulted on the deal to pay Ryan extra money, which then led to transactions which the auditors appear to have been able to pick up on.

The hysterical calls for the audit and risk committee to be fired should be just ignored.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786284#Comment_120786284

And the trips and freebies that came from the account blanch?

Was Dee Forbes paying the airlines, restaurants, hotels, tickemaster, golf clubs etc. in secret?

How were those transactions hidden?

The 'secret' arrangements re Tubs were hiding in plain sight and all it required was SOMEBODY to do their job competently, from the CFO to the Director of Commercial to ARC and ask questions or conduct internal inquiry as they are remitted to do.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786333#Comment_120786333

How the hell would the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee know any of that about the airlines, restaurants etc?

How would the auditors know?

Was Dee Forbes walking around with a big sign on her head saying we paid for this out of a secret barter account?

Think about it for a while before you address these issues.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786471#Comment_120786471

There was a stink raised about it in 2019 blanch.

Are you telling me that media did not ask for the figures? Over a million being spent? Are you telling me that nobody looked at the accounts to check on what was spent and didn't find any record and just left it at that? Simply asking why this expenditure was not in the normal accounts would have been enough to blow the whole thing open.

That's before we get into false invoicing and possible fraud that nobody asked about or inquired into.

In no company anywhere would that kind of imcompetence be tolerated. Especially when the terms of reference spell out your duties.

It's clear there was massive incompetence or more than one person knew what was going on. IMO Leo is wrong here, the Gardai should be in there already.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/taoiseach-concerned-rte-paid-for-work-not-done-and-says-it-cant-be-ruled-out-payments-were-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-law/a1407359544.html

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786524#Comment_120786524

Not a single bit there explains to me why you believe the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee should resign?

I have been absolutely clear all along that there are serious questions to be answered by the Executive Board, but I have also been very clear that the Minister or the Government cannot sack the Executive Board, they are employees, answerable to the CEO. Before you move the goalposts yet again, do you accept that you were completely in error seeking that the Minister fire people he cannot fire.

Then we turn to the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, the person who has exposed the wrongdoing, the whistleblower in effect, though she was just doing her job. You want her fired for doing her job. You want the Board fired for backing her in doing her job. Ridiculous stuff.

None of the stuff you have posted has any relevance to your previous posts erroneously calling for the Minister to fire people he couldn't fire and to fire other people who were doing their job competently.

Sam Russell

A friend who, as an experienced accountant well versed in audit procedures, told me that the first place an auditor looks at when doing an audit of a company is to dig into the petty cash account. It is normally where dodgy stuff occurs.

[Now, I suspect that is apocryphal, but it does show experience of what people do to hide stuff.]

I have had several VAT inspections by Revenue, and they follow the same routine of selecting a month and looking at all invoices and payments. Our books were always presented in Red Books, as per normal. One month had the last few invoices entered in pencil, so the inspector spent ages totting the pages. Of course, everything was perfect.

The use of credit notes should be a red flag for any audit. Also invoices with few details, like names and dates, is also a red flag.

Of course the auditors picked them up, but they should have noticed the Renault ones before they noticed the others. Of course, the Renault credit note could be explained by Covid because the LLS was not operating properly as Renault would have contracted for - so a refund was probably correct.

RTE management always knew their home grown 'stars' are home grown and have lived in the hot house of RTE and have nowhere else to go. That simply means that there is no need to match the BBC or any other channel in either pay or conditions. There will always be young 'talent' on the way up. It is exposure on RTE that makes them 'stars'.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786556#Comment_120786556

I have been absolutely clear all along that there are serious questions to be answered by the Executive Board, but I have also been very clear that the Minister or the Government cannot sack the Executive Board, they are employees, answerable to the CEO. Before you move the goalposts yet again, do you accept that you were completely in error seeking that the Minister fire people he cannot fire.

I already did and said I am not really concerned about WHO does it, it should be done if RTE want to rebuild trust. I fully accept I may have been wrong on the detail...please don't use it to deflect.

Then we turn to the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, the person who has exposed the wrongdoing, the whistleblower in effect, though she was just doing her job. You want her fired for doing her job. You want the Board fired for backing her in doing her job. Ridiculous stuff.

The Chair and Committee of ARC eventually twigged it BUT should have twigged it much earlier, as pointed out the signs were there had any of them being competent or fulfilling their roles set out in their terms of reference.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786593#Comment_120786593

Your position on the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee has been demolished several times over by a number of posters.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786766#Comment_120786766

Maybe you are biased on that opinion. :)

You haven't come up with a single credible defence of them bar they 'eventually' figured it out.

There wasn't a single obstacle to them finding out earlier.

Going forward, who would have confidence, which is what RTE and the government need to restore.

Their function is to scrutinise and question, not rubber stamp and act dumb.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786824#Comment_120786824

Who are you kidding? The Chair of an Audit and Risk Committee is not some forensic accountant looking at every single transaction in a large organisation like RTE.

You don't understand the role, you don't understand the responsibilities, you don't understand the part-time nature of the role.

The barter account and arrangements were well hidden from the board, at the first sign of discrepancy the Audit and Risk Committee acted.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786908#Comment_120786908

You don't need to be forensic to ask where the money for obvious trips are coming from blanch.

Eventually they figured out there was something wrong, did they wake up that morning with 'forensic powers'?

The same something' was wrong for years before, they missed it. Asleep at the wheel.

I understand their responsibilities, I read their terms of reference...the question is, did you? Obviously not, as you are still making excuses.