Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

The fox or the vixen :)

Has Buckhurst made his statement yet?

This made me chuckle

RTÉ’s director general has defended his decision to give an exit package to Rory Coveney, saying the national broadcaster could have been ordered to pay double the amount if the former strategy director had taken a wrongful dismissal case.

Kevin Bakhurst said there were “absolutely no grounds” to sack Mr Coveney, who was described as the “driving force” behind the ill-fated musical which lost the organisation €2.2m.

Mr Coveney, the brother of Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney, received a package when he resigned and his role was made redundant in July last year — the same week Mr Bakhurst took the helm.

Mr Bakhurst said RTÉ expects to recoup the cost of the payment to Mr Coveney by July this year, leading to speculation the payment was approximately one year’s salary, or about €200,000.

Recalling the comment yesterday, Mr Bakhurst said that “statutory” was a technical term and that what he actually meant was that Mr Coveney had been given an appropriate fee based on his 16 years at the organisation and compared to what he would receive at the WRC.

Mr Bakhurst also confirmed that former chief financial officer Richard Collins was given a payment to leave the organisation, after independent mediation which included a confidentiality clause.

The director general has come under fresh scrutiny about the payouts and confidentiality agreements. Labour senator Marie Sherlock said there had been a “convenient retrofitting of the truth” and the public were led to believe that Mr Coveney resigned of his own volition.

It actually looks like Bakhurst is going for obfuscation more than transparent. If Coveney and Collins are no longer around then there are no answers to be scrutinized.

If you were in the private sector and lost the company you worked for a couple of million quid you world be sacked on the spot

that’s before the point of not informing the company you spent the couple of million of their money without authorisation

and that point the gardai are called in

what bugs me about this is that RTE is funded through taxpayers money and this is compulsory. So RTE is in effect state funded and has to answer to the state, in other words RTE and the Government are in this together particularly when it comes to broadcasting , reporting and zero transparency or objectivity!

To muddy the water more, Simon Coveney's brother had one of the top jobs in RTE - got a huge termination fee and is unavailable for comment. Surely this is a huge conflict of interest. In so many ways RTE is a branch of Government. How can it be impartial? If people stop paying their licence fee and RTE is 100% funded by some Government department then it can never be impartial or objective! Do we want this???

(apologies this point may have already been made but I am not trawling back through 380 pages of posts).

Never trusted Bakhurst and still don’t! He was brought in to “smooth” things over, he is obviously doing that perfectly.

in NO private company, could a director run a play/project without authorisation and loose millions without being fired on the spot, no severance pay. That is called dereliction of duty by a director, that’s why you have a board to run things past and get approval.

what I see going on right now, is that Bakhurst is covering up other wrongdoing. He also needs to go.

The givernment needs to ACT on behalf of the Tax Payer, in any other country, these people would be escorted to any enquiry by police … sick my a@se!

The whole thing is a charade at this stage.

PS… have a TV license always have had, but this year, good luck getting €160 from me!

Could you not argue that a competent manager would have known what he was getting into before he accepted the role? The analogy of finding yourself being parachuted into the Battle of Arnheim only works if there was a sudden revelation of poor management and financial decisions within RTE, but the dogs have the street have known that for years. A competent manager would have researched the organisation, and when comparing the salaries alone in RTE compared to say the BBC would have been bowled over, and then deciding "Clearly things need to change, if I take this job its going to be an up hill struggle, do I say yes and start implementing change or do I say sod it, I can't be arsed".

Backhurst is an RTE insider, steeped in the ways of RTE which is not what RTE needs. RTE needs an outsider, preferably someone from outside media to go in there and clear the place out and put in proper processes throughout the place. That person can then bring in their own outsiders with media experience to improve the place. But first the place needs to be gutted of insiders, way too many in there.

I really wish Bakhurst had let the likes of Coveney try to take RTE to the WRC. Even if they got a larger payout in the long run, let them have the balls to lose RTE millions and bring RTE into disrepute, and then take RTE to the WRC and justify why they should get their payout. It should have been a rod for their own backs rather than RTE giving them a payoff to get rid of them while also ensuring they don't have to appear before any committee hearings.

Would love to see this happening. It seems these pay offs or moving people sideways is the way in Public Service when wanting to get rid of people.

Doing…………?

Oh I'd say she was eyeing up a payoff like Collins and Coveney got.

What is it with the Coveney's?

Years back, one brother was involved in the horse meat scandal, and now the other one is showing he's just as privileged and ignorant as the other one.

They strike as the kind of people that, if you ask them what todays date is, you'd have to double check on every single calendar. They're just that untrustworthy.