RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

What time does round 2 start at? And who’s on the starting team today? Will RT, NK, or D4 get off the subs bench?

Having watched the debate, a few follow up questions from my point of view.

When first asked, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, suggested that Dee Forbes had resigned while they were trying to engage in examining what had happened.

Question Senator Cassell. 

"In terms of setting out to Ms Forbes why she was being suspended, can Ms Ní Raghallaigh tell me what she said to her in that respect?"

Siún Ní Raghallaigh

"A formal letter went out to her."

But then to a follow up question

"Actually, the suspension was while the disciplinary procedure was happening. It is the resignation that puts her outside of this. There was a process in train up until the point of her resignation on Monday where it was put to her what was wrong here, and the process had started as regards engaging. We set up a third-party intermediary to run that. We also set up a subcommittee of the board specifically to deal with this disciplinary procedure. "

But she left out that it was her, Ní Raghallaigh, that had asked for her (DF) resignation. Not lying , but clearly SNiR gave the impression that DF resignation was her own decision

1, Why did she not answer the question directly and honestly about DF resignation?

Apparently a fee of €80,000 was paid to the barter account facilitator to pay €75000 to to NHM or RT.

2, Who authorised such a massive fee to make this payment, where did the money come from, and why did RTE have to pick up the tab for this?

We were told early in the session that the remuneration committee never dealt with the contracts for 'talent' . But later we were told that the new LLS contract for Patrick Kielty would have to go to that committee.

3 Which is it? Important because it would suggest that a board sub committee would have had sight of the RT contract if it went to this subcommittee.

We now know that finance did know in early March that there was a problem, from the audit. A week later RT resigns from LLS. So far we only know that the DFO knew.

4, Who knew in early March that there was a problem with the audit.and was RT informed about the problem?

According to RTE, RT is now out of contract. He is also not working at the moment but is still being paid.

5a On what basis is RTE paying RT if he is not doing any work for RTE and is not under contract?

5b . And how is that payment being made and how much.?

so more or less the line from all of them is 'nobody knows nothing' and yer wan dee with the huge glasses gets to fcuk off into the sunset with a probable huge pension and probable huge payoff (paid for by all of us ordinary joes) and wont be saying anything to anyone about anything..?what a clusterfcuk

Only in RTE world could a contractor, paid on results only, be still getting paid for his services even if he isn't providing them? And if he isn't under contract he doesn't have any right to be paid...it would be like a contractor on a daily rate still getting their payments even though the contract has ended!

Brian

lets see how further they can dig down into the hole.

hopefully no sick notes today and they turn up

What slot is Ivan doing?

Just something from yesterday that struck me as notable; In reporting RT's response to claims that his contract with RTE was at an end, it was stated that "a source close to Ryan" which to me strikes as short hand for NKM's PR machine in overdrive again.

As many here have been rightly pointing out for years, it was/is disturbing the influence that NKM exercises over Irish media and has done for a long time. Admittedly it is very subtle until you begin to notice the patterns. The amount of "human interest" stories put into the media about his various stable talents, especially when there is a risk that they might be sliding out of the spot light or becoming less relevant (i.e and risk losing currency and value for NKM). It would be very interesting to see how much NKM is earning in fees from just RTE alone on an annual basis. I would suggest it is A. Considerably in excess of RT's earnings and B. Considerably greater than just fees involving those in the top 10 represented by him, but hugely supplemented by the others he represents further down the earnings list.

One notable thing that Joe Duffy said on Liveline earlier in the week that he and others of his ilk regularly roll out. is that the advertising draw/revenue generated by big name presenters in the media justify their renumeration. However, as many here have equally (and regularly even before this present fiasco) pointed out much of that audience draw is simpy down to the time spot or the programme itself and by no means attributable to the "star" attraction of the presenter and can easily be evidenced by the fact that such audiences don't dry up when the presenter goes on lengthy holidays or leaves (e.g Pat Kenny, Sean O'Rourke, Gerry Ryan, Marian, etc). Also, it did occur to me while listening to this argument advanced by Joe yet again, if the advertising revenue generation is so lucrative for such shows, then why was Dee Forbes constantly doing the poor mouth re the TV licence looking for more revenue instead of utilising this supposed windfall for funding broadcasting, instead of supplementing the fees/salaries of the stars? This long advanced argument of stars justifying their fees on revenue generation/audience draw strike me as an argument straight out of the NKM PR playbook.

Send them an invoice.

You never know.

Spot on especially the part about the constant stream of nonsense stories from the "talent".

Perfect example Lottie Ryan.

Quick Google two absolute nothing stories in last 24 hours at least.

If you want a speech, it can be double that.

Interesting noting how so many folks have spoken about how Tubridy's agent, Noel Kelly, blacklisted journalists and reporters. They couldn't get an interview with any of his clients if they weren't nice to em.

Speaks of the toxic workplace environment folks have spoken of in the past, and recently.

They have money thought that's the key and they listen to the Radio, having Joe audience would be very advantagages to any brodcadters career.

Copies of contracts, side letters, barter account statements, what else? were requested yesterday and RTÉ said they’d provide them.

Will they have these today? Don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be but as Brendan said yesterday he’s still waiting for paperwork from last March/April that they said they would hand over.

What time is the PAC hearings starting today?

Ah yeah Yates is a chancer but he knows how the system works and knows how to sort through the spoof