Ryan Tubridy offers to pay back controversial payments at centre of RTE ‘fiasco’

RTE’s star presenter Ryan Tubridy has offered to pay back two payments at the centre of a “fiasco” the broadcaster has been embroiled in, as he laid bare the toll it had taken on him personally.

Former Late Late Show presenter Tubridy said that he was due to make six more appearances for commercial sponsor Renault as part of a contentious deal at the centre of the crisis that has engulfed RTE.

But he added that “if that work is not called upon to be done, of course the money goes back”.

In two extraordinary committee appearances at Dublin’s parliament, Tubridy said he had been “publicly cancelled” and it was “touch and go” whether he would be allowed to return to his weekly radio programme.

He said that he wants to return to RTE Radio as soon as possible “because it’s all I’ve got”.

“If I do go back to RTE, which I hope to, it’ll be a whole new world order,” Tubridy said in his closing remarks.

RTE has been mired in controversy since it emerged last month that it under-reported fees paid to Tubridy and failed to correctly disclose 345,000 euro of payments to him between 2017 and 2022.

I hate being referred to as ‘the talent’. I think it’s an obscene, outdated word.

The furore has since widened amid further disclosures about RTE’s internal financial, accounting and governance practices and its expenditure on corporate hospitality for advertising clients.

RTE operates on a dual funding model, with the majority of its revenue secured from a licence fee and the rest generated from advertising revenue.

The Government has paused discussions on a new long-term funding arrangement until the current crisis abates.

Newly appointed director general Kevin Bakhurst stood down RTE’s executive leadership board on Monday as he vowed to restore people’s trust in Ireland’s public service broadcaster.

When asked whether Tubridy will return to the airwaves, Mr Bakhurst told Newstalk that the decision will be made in “a matter of a few weeks” – adding that he felt sorry for him.

While the Irish government has announced two separate external reviews of RTE and also moved to send in a forensic auditor to examine the broadcaster’s accounts, the Public Accounts Committee and Media Committee in Dublin are conducting their own probes into the affair.

As Tubridy appeared before both committees on Tuesday, he at times appeared emotional, slamming his hand on the table during his opening statement and claiming there had been misinformation around what fees he had been paid.

Tubridy also emphasised that none of the payments represented “overpayments of any sort”, but instead were under declarations by RTE.

He said that a 120,000 payment due at the end of his 2015-2019 contract had been waived by him, and said that RTE then suggested that it should be accounted for by retrospectively under-reporting his salary across several years.

“We made clear that the 120,000 should not be taken off or deducted for prior year actual earnings,” he said, calling such a suggestion from the broadcaster “odd”.

The former Late Late show host also reiterated on several occasions that his decision to step down from RTE’s flagship chat show was not linked to the discovery of the accounting issues by auditors in March.

Tubridy announced publicly that he would step down from the programme after 14 years at its helm on March 16, and presented the last episode in May.

“My name has been desperately sullied, I think my reputation has been sullied,” Tubridy told the committee, stating that he had been subjected to a “frenzy”.

“I’m deeply upset. I’m hurt. It’s hard to leave the house if you really want me to be honest about it.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know if any of you’ve been cancelled before but let me tell you, you don’t want to be there.”

He said that the support he had received was something he would “never forget”, and said that he would “love to be part of that catharsis” at RTE.

“If it was to sign another contract, I’d put it out in the public straightaway, no messing, no three-year carry on, I’d be part and parcel of the new process to build trust with my colleagues and the listeners,” he said.

“I hate being referred to as ‘the talent’. I think it’s an obscene, outdated word. The talent in RTE work in reception, and they work in security, and in make-up, and hair and sound and camera and production. That’s the talent.

“So if we do anything to change the language around RTE, please take that silly word off the contracts going forward.

“They’re colleagues, no-one is better than anyone else.”

People were seen commenting and reacting to the proceedings being screened in some bars across Dublin.

In one of the most significant revelations from the day, TDs were given an email which challenged RTE claims that ex-director general Dee Forbes had done a “solo run” by agreeing to underwrite a 75,000-euro-a-year deal involving RTE, Tubridy and Renault.

The deal involved Tubridy making three appearances at Renault events per year.

RTE executives have previously explained that Renault paid Tubridy the first 75,000 euro payment, while two other 75,000 euro payments were from RTE, as it had underwritten the amounts due – in what TDs were previously told was a verbal-only agreement made on a Microsoft Teams meeting in May 2020.

But an email between Tubridy’s agent Noel Kelly and former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe in February 2020, CCing Ms Forbes and director of content Jim Jennings, informed the agent of RTE’s willingness to “provide you with a side letter to underwrite this fee for the duration of the contract”.

Labour TD Alan Kelly said that the documents were “compelling” and “completely” contradict RTE’s account of events.

Noel Kelly told TDs they had been “under siege” in recent weeks, and that Tubridy had been made a “poster boy” for the controversy.

He said RTE had attempted to “distance itself” from its decisions, that the deal with Renault was “known widely within the executive board of RTE”, and this was “a mess of RTE’s making”.

“Suddenly the most trusted man in Ireland, Ryan Tubridy, it was like ‘throw him under a bus’. Why?” Mr Kelly said.

RTE has rejected the claim it gave an “incorrect version of events” over an agreement to underwrite payments to Tubridy, and reiterated its position that a verbal commitment given by the former director-general during a video call on May 7 was when the 75,000 euro payments were underwritten.

RTE’s new director-general Mr Bakhurst is to appear before the Public Accounts committee on Thursday, his fourth day in the role, alongside other RTE executives.

Committee members have been informed that Ms O’Keeffe is not in a position to attend Thursday’s hearing.

Tubridy has not presented his weekday morning radio programme since the issues at RTE came to light on June 22.