RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

 think RT will indeed make a radio comeback and the way to make this happen is to have him on a show where he has the chance to interface directly with the public.

in fact, I think Liveline would be the perfect vehicle for RT to make that comeback 

he is a naturally gifted broadcaster - probably one of the best this country of Wogan, Byrne, Norton,…. has ever produced

he dearly loves the people of Ireland, with whom he has raised millions for charity and the people of Ireland - especially those whose lives he saved during the pandemic clearly love RT

yesterday - his humility and remorse shone through - he had asked us for forgiveness - I forgive him with all my heart and soul as do millions of others like me.

I've no doubt that RTE's governance and practices were deplorable.

But fook me. For a contractor to come out with that performance yesterday and literally **** all over you. How the hell could they take him back now. It's impossible.

....

Not sure a poll would give you an accurate picture. At the moment this thread is full of rt diehards who agree that the money "didn't affect his soul" and we must think of the poor childer who would be devastated to lose the toyman.

The level of delusions and narcissism from Tubridy are truly shocking.

VAT on services was NEVER 23%.

VAT on GOODS is 23%.

It was the borderline shouting over the questioner in both committees that I thought was up with the worst of it - and when eventually they, ie the questioner, conceded (although it ate into their 10 minute allotted time), it was emotional, self-aggrandising grandstanding that had NOTHING to do with what he was being questioned about (no conicidence there!) Marie Sherlock in her excellent segment was a particular victim of this. She should be given half an hour minimum next time.

Should not have been allowed by the chair - let it run once, and then stamp down on it hard every time it's tried again.

In fairness, it didn't help that the morons the other side of the desk kept asking the same questions over and over again - more concerned about the sound byte for their Twitter feed than they were about examining the witnesses.

Invoicing a UK company for work that was carried out in this country

is that illegal tax wise?

In fact, further to my post above - In a high profile, complex case like this, I wonder could they not agree to reduce the number of questioners so that each one could have longer to drill into their particular issue?

I felt often in yesterdays PAC (I've only seen snippets of the Media Comm, but as I said particularly in the case of Marie Sherlock) they were just about getting NK/RT on the ropes with their evasive answers and ducking and diving - and then their time was up and all momentum was lost.

I'm sure they love the profile of doing the grilling - but for the greater good, if anyone of you is reading this - please consider this for next time!

There may be procedural rules against it, but say if there's two from same party, then they could take it in turns one week versus next to be the sole questioner. That way they both get coverage.

Gardai, judge and revenue are the only ones to sort this. Do they even swear an oath for these oireachtas committees? There is no penalty for perjury.

A big problem with these committees is that there's no divisioning or planning of questions. They're not saying "You ask questions on this topic, I'll ask questions about this other thing, you're going after me so I'll ask these questions and then you can follow up with this". It's because they're all from different parties, with different agendas. So they all want to be the one to ask the main questions and go for the gotchca and/or grandstanding, even above others from the same party as themselves.

So in fairness to Noel Kelly, as stupid and ridiculous as it was that he just kept repeating that RTE told him to raise the invoice that way and he was doing what RTE told him, the reason he gave that answer so many times is because he was asked the same question so many times.

Plus the fact that NK/RT only gave them all the documents/info 2 hours before the first hearing and nobody had enough time to properly go through it, a move I can only consider to be entirely intentional. While Tubridy repeatedly threw out the line about how hard the last three weeks have been and how long they spent getting all the documents together, Monday morning at the latest is when those documents should have been handed over for review.