RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

Given barter accounts appear to be common particularly in the Irish media, you'd wonder how many are based abroad and what the tax implications are.

This could be the next part of the scandal.

If you deliver a service for a fee, you must pay tax on that fee and must declare everything to the taxman and have it transparent in accounts, ie the true nature and value of the service.

70 would be too young for Funny Friday.

Playback tomorrow morning on Radio 1 should be a hoot. 9am to 10am.

I agree that there is very very little chance of RT coming back to Radio 1.

Anyone know why The Funny Friday element of the Joe D element was taken off the air?

To be fair to him, Tubridy is getting a bit of a rough deal out of this, his career is probably in ruins out of nowhere, but it's his own doing.

You generally only have one chance to come clean when you get rumbled and unfortunately he absolutely butchered that chance with his first statement. Him and NKM basically went all in on the "nothing to do with me" strategy to try and front it out.

I can't remember Duffy's exact words but it was something to the effect of 'given all that's going on it's cancelled'.

No need to ask questions - just a written note to DF to say that his salary is incorrectly reported. As they say ‘fixed that’

Tubs suffers from a common affliction of many working in a similar role in media today. Laziness. The old guard actually had a bit of pride in their job performance and still do. Whatever people say about Pat Kenny, no one can accuse him of not preparing for interviews. The man reads the books, devours current affairs coverage in his own time and is just a curious, engaged person.

Same can be said of Eamon Dunphy. His podcast I think is a phenomenal service to Irish journalism and it's incredible to think that were this 20 years ago, Dunphy would probably be long retired and silent. He should have and should have had, a prime slot on Radio 1 doing a similar job for years. But of course, as we have seen with RTE over the last 10-20 years, and in sharp focus this week, the state broadcaster isn't interested in raw ability. It's interested in mediocrity that nods along and doesn't rock the boat. And it pays handsomely for it. The business model under Forbes wasnt to attract the best people and grow revenues by moving with the times and demographics. The model was pay your pals well, go on jollies and whine to government for more money.

TBF, this whole phenomenon isn't specific to RTE. There's a general collapse in standards in all manner of things. It's a generational thing imo. The Gay Byrne's, Wogan's, Parkinson's grew up in a different world where rigor in journalism was important and valued. It's not as much today. So many are stealing a living. The cult of personality now trumps all.

I agree to a point. He didn't actually do anything "wrong", he'd have no idea how RTE were managing their invoices, and it seems the extra payments were made from RTE to NK and then to Tubridy, so it would be NK who knew the invoices were worded in such a way to avoid noting the money was for Tubridy, and it would have been NK who likely did most of the legwork in negotiating the contract with RTE. And as we've seen with regards the barter account, the issue is bigger than just Tubridy's contract.

But, Tubridy knew he was getting extra money, and the reason he was getting extra money was because the other RTE presenters, most of whom also represented by NK, just took the paycut and didn't look for extras. Presuming all of this only relates to Tubridy's contract, it makes it fairly clear that Tubridy was looking for extra money or he wouldn't sign a new contract.

The responsibility for calling his bluff, pointing out everyone was taking a paycut etc, falls on RTE. They should have held firm instead of helping to burn RTE down to give Tubridy & NK shady extra payments.

No.

The onus is on RTE to report the correct salaries. Not RT

How dare you call them mere presenters!!

They are "the talent" and we pay them for being full of talent in the other 163 hours of the week.

I can’t believe that Noel Kelly was allowed to get as much power. Years ago in my innocence I never knew of Kelly or paid heed to him.

But boards posters pointed out the amount of RTE people he represented then.

All I could think of was all the problems/conflict of interest and above all lack of competition in the market. I wondered why it had not blown up before. But finally it has now.

Personally I think it is crucial that legislation is brought in to regulate the agents of media personalities to prevent such anti-competitive dominance in future.

It is at the nub of this whole situation.