RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

I will add to that and add childrens TV. RTE used to have the Den, which 'hosted' the imported cartoons. Now, the little Ive seen, is just back to back imported stuff. 3.30 tomorrow on RTE 2 is Lions vs Hyenas. Described as:

"Documentary charting the fortunes of a male lion cub and a female hyena pup, each born at the same time on the African plains, as they develop into maturity". Sounds more like something your grand dad would watch, not draw young people into watch.

3.30 was when the Den started traditionally. My mum loved the Den, especially Dustin. Most of the jokes went over my head, but there are clips on YoutTube that are hilarious. If Ray Darcy wants to earn his 250k a year. I would say he'd be as well off working for 3 hours a day on the telly instead of 1 hour a day on the radio. Or better still, get someone vibrant, not boring the arse off people with stories of sour dough bread.

The Future of Media Commission may well have recommended direct funding from the Exchequer (I don't know for sure, it's 284 pages long) but I'm pretty sure that the FoMC did say that there would be a danger of 'Perceived or actual bias towards the Govt of the day*' if this were the case - and indeed, the brilliant Catherine Martin (who's desk had to be moved to the ground floor cos of the weight of reports on it) discounted DEF for this very reason

'*' like there isn't enough RTE bias towards the Govt as it stands

So, yeah - it looks like Bakhurst is a company man alright - He's had the perfect opportunity gifted to a new DG that was intent on cleaning the place up in the Ryan Tubridy scandal, but has chosen to ignore the chance to implement wholesale changes to fees/contractors and is actively trying to get the gravy train back up to full speed (with the minimum of tweaks) instead of regaining the trust of the Irish people - Shame really

I said it before, The DG position should be performance based - Decent base salary and hefty bonuses paid depending on performance/results/savings

Ultimately, Govts (past and present) are to blame imo. They well knew that large parts of West Africa were looking at RTE and thinking - "Fook me, those guys are good - makes us look like amateurs down here"

The RTE 'players' and the Govt 'players' are in the club

I’d say tubridy was cute enough to have a separate contract for radio and a get out clause for both…

Don't think so. The contract may have been among the papers submitted to the PAC or the Media Committee. It also mentioned the TV show and the radio show. Since Tubridy broke the contract by no longer presenting the LLS and there were reports of a new contract to cover his radio show being under negotiation, RTE does not have a contract with Tubridy. As for the invoices, RTE should not have paid him anything. He's a contractor without a contract.

Regards...jmcc

RTE should start removing all traces of his presence (intellectual property) and change the programme name. RTE needs to assert its position and rights. Otherwise, Bakhurst might as well stay on his holidays.

Regards...jmcc

The contracts are here https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/committee/dail/33/committee_of_public_accounts/other/2023/2023-07-11_briefing-document-hayes-solicitors-on-behalf-of-ryan-tubridy-and-noel-kelly-r2029-pac33_en.pdf

2015 contract starts on page 1, and the 2020 contract starts on page 18.

It does seem that the higher salary was for the "exclusive services of Ryan Tubridy" which imo makes it very interesting regarding how so many papers from 2010 - 2018 reported on how the bbc wanted him, without any journalist putting their name to the article.

Copying and pasting from the PDF is not really working correctly in firefox, whether or not it is the OCR or the way it was converted to PDF I do not know. So this may be better looked at from the original link as it holds some of the relevant information [I will try to bold].

There is so much to look at in those pages that it is not surprising that the pac did not get to ask all of the relevant questions after only seeing them for 15 minutes. I wonder if Tubs thought that 8.3 allowed him to use that clause for the pregnant woman in the taxi from Dundalk for almost €1000, and if so, who in rte authorised it first?

All of the publications are here to read https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/publications/?q=&date=&term=%2Fie%2Foireachtas%2Fhouse%2Fdail%2F33&fromDate=05%2F08%2F2023&toDate=05%2F08%2F2023&committee%5B%5D=%2Fen%2Fcommittees%2F33%2Fcommittee-of-public-accounts%2F&topic%5B%5D=correspondence&topic%5B%5D=minutesAgendas&topic%5B%5D=opening-statements-submissions&topic%5B%5D=briefing-papers&topic%5B%5D=correspondence&topic%5B%5D=minutesAgendas&topic%5B%5D=opening-statements-submissions

We were told at some point during the hearings that the reason the big presenters are paid so much is because they can attract sponsors and advertisers during the break want to be associated with the show because of the presenter. If Tubridy does come back, I think any sponsor going forward for the next few years would expect a hefty discount because of the controversy and I would expect a lot of advertisers would too. Wouldn't surprise me if Renault sales are down because of all this.

They should make a clean break, thats the reason for the self employment contracts they handed out and we're told that the presenters are paid a premium because of the precariousness of the contracts. Let someone else snap up Tubs after all we're told thats another reason we've been paying him a premium

Yea, and Ryan would love to be working.

It’s madness, the people want Ryan, he wants to be there for them and management keep him out while still paying him.

Its confusing when Bakhurst says he's not worried about the drop off in licence fee revenue, that the organisation is fully funded for the next two years.

Where did this extra money come from, was it from the sale of land? If Tubridy is let go, there's some hope of licence fee revenue recovering, but if he's brought back in the next few weeks, there's no hope of it recovering anytime soon.

And this extra money was surely intended to fund reforms or else public sector broadcasting, not to plug the gap left by the Tubridy fiasco.

Either way RTE will be down tens of millions because of this, and Bakhurst doesn't seem too bothered.

You'd wonder did Kevin and Leo have an auld chin wag and Leo told him the government would address any short fall in license fee.

tbf, this is far more than tubridys fault, theres clearly a deeply imbedded culture within rte, thats been going on long before he turned up, this is ultimately what we need to face and resolve, we cant keep just keeping on here, this is a serious misuse of public resources and public money!

ah bit of a loaded comment, tbh, id say many of us would do almost the same thing, if in that situation, if our employer was willing and able to pay us as such, i suspect most of us would do it, i probably would myself, but its how the whole situation has unfolded, he wasnt the only one lying about his pay, or holding back the information, there really is something for more deeper to be resolved here, we cant allow this to continue. we all know more and more are starting to struggle in society, we really need our public services, including our media services to be functioning as efficiently as possible, this whole situation is a big fcuk you to all of that, we cant allow this to continue....

It bears repeating - Tubridy is NOT a popular figure in Ireland - it is not surprising that a car brand that sponsored his show suffered by association with his weird “d4 Willy wonka” persona.