RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

My sympathies - always hard when a family pet dies, but dogs particularly so.

I don't think anyone was under any illusion about how poor a broadcaster Tubridy was.

You can never disentangle the fact that we're talking about a semi state here, with approx 50% income from a mandatory fee foisted on every household in Ireland. What do all these companies have in common? Waste on an industrial level and lots and lots of overpaid, unsackable lifers on increments for time served. Performance is only a concept in the private sector.

Tubs has been cosseted with kid gloves all his life in RTE. Failure rewarded with promotion. His laziness and lack of ability rewarded with a short radio show that requires him to do next to nothing and a chat show that he was allowed to bastardize into a weekly stroll through his comfort zone.

As Butters often said, it was his prime time slots that ensured some kind of audience, not his personal pulling power. For the DGs and Boards, he was part of the furniture and NK ensured he was handsomely renumerated on successive contracts. His entire media career is a bloody farce, like something out of Russian propaganda state TV. He's great because they tell us he's great. Don't ask any questions and pay him.

Sorry to hear about your poor dog. I'm sure that you gave her a great life. We need you back here, when you feel up to it. God bless you and poor Suki.

@ButtersSuki hope your back when you are feeling up to it sorry to hear about your dog. Big thanks for your posts over the last few months always informative.

Ryan is more suited to Radio 1 to be fair, I think he'd agree that it's his natural home. He did a very good job on the Late Late, to be fair he had to compete with Netflix and other streaming services, which none of his predecessors had to do. But people still tuned in to watch in huge numbers largely because of Ryan's ability as an interviewer and presenter. Obviously he did an amazing job during Covid, he did a superb job of sustaining the country's morale and solidarity when it was being tested like never before.

You can't please all the people all the time of course, and there are some negative Nellys who don't like Ryan even despite his work for charity, but the management surely know he has to be restored. I can't understand this dragging it out, it's very unfair to Ryan, and also to his listeners.

But if I mentioned The Full Irish the breakfast show on 2FM that catapulted him to fame you'd say he was more suited to that time slot on 2FM rather then the mid-morning slot. You agree that RTÉ were then wrong to keep him on 2FM for 5 years, while John Murray retain his audience on RTÉ Radio 1.

If your competition is greater and you return is less... you get paid less or you grow your audience.

As I say this isn't just about Ryan Tubridy, its about RTÉ's governance, defend the DG that was suspended and resigned because of all of this, and the commercial director who took early retirement, or the strategic director who quit.

Bakhurst -

“As I’ve said previously, Ryan is a hugely talented broadcaster, and as with anyone with such talent there’s always a range of possibilities."

Jesus wept!

This has been pointed out many times on this thread.

You are correct in that there is a deeply embedded culture in RTE and that is that ‘Nothing that happens in our organisation gets into the public domain’

You had Duffy today roaring and shouting that the Lottery crowd wouldn’t come on air when the absolute cretins who pay him his wedge funded by you and me NEVER come on air in crisis situations.

Remember Birthdaygate!!! Could RTE provide a spokesperson……. .is a pigs p***y pork????

The arrogance and hard neck of that lot of cretins is mindblowing….mindblowing i tells ya.

Need to clean that kip out.

I don't want to be one of "those guys" but having lived in Switzerland for years now....nail on the head. It makes me angry when I see how year after year, scandal after scandal emerges. The banks, FAI, countless charities, RTE....etc.

Coupled with that, you have a lot of people struggling with the cost of educating children in Ireland. Books, uniforms from places which essentially have a monopoly, parents paying for education through a "voluntary" contribution.

In Switzerland, and expensive place to live, education truly is free. No schoolbooks, no photocopying fees, no uniforms, no kids being made to feel bad because they are less well off. And no overpaid presenters.

And funny enough, there was a referendum a while back to ask the public if they wanted to get rid of the equivalent of the licence fee here. It was widely rejected. People have faith in the public institutions....imagine!

I am not sure that is completely true. I have nieces and nephews under the age of ten and he doesn't come up in conversation, maybe during the week of the toy show, and after that not much.

As I say while the tread is titled "RTÉ admits paying tubridy .... " can you see the other governance problems or are they doing a good job?

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Not surprising. It should be interesting to see if this causes an increase in licence fee non renewals.

Regards...jmcc

'Governance Problems...'

€1.2m moved through 'Barter A/c' for 'Consultancy Services' which were never received (aka Slush Fund)

€275,000 spent on 'Corporate Hospitality' which may include:

€110,00 spent on 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan

€26,000 spent on 2019 Champions League Final in Madrid

€138,000 spent on IRFU 10 year Season Tickets

€4,200 spent on membership of Soho House Club in London

Between €3,500 and €5,000 spent on flip-flops

€2,000 spent on balloons

€15,000 spent on refurbishment of Dee Forbes office

The fella whose paid to keep an eye on the sums (CFO) doesn't know how much his earning

...and this is my own top of the heap bugbear:

€350,000 paid to Joe Duffy to listen to callers on the radio

It has the capability to become politically problematic for TDs. Think about the effect of the Water Tax protests on Labour (37 seats in 2011 to 7 seats in 2016).

Regards...jmcc

What planet are you living on Ryan??? Tubridy apart from being a completely naff and preening character can just feck right off - if that fond of the wee childer, there is a place on RTEJr for childrens programming. Not wanted back - got it??