Former Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy is still being paid by RTE despite not currently being on air.
The veteran broadcaster earlier this year, but continued his weekday radio programme before being taken off air for ‘editorial reasons’ in the involving misstated payments to the star presenter.
In an investigation into the payments, other ‘Barter accounts’ were found to be used by RTE which were not on official payment schemes, including the public network shelling out huge money for clients.
Late Late Show sponsors Renault had a barter account deal with RTE, and the network had agreed to cover the cost of sets, food, drink and guests at Renault events, with RTE guaranteeing money to the broadcaster – rather than Renault – if the events did not go ahead.
Appearing before the Oireachtas media committee on Thursday, RTE boss Adrian Lynch confirmed Tubridy would not be on air next week but the network would still be paying him.
He said: ‘There were negotiations going on about a radio contract [for Tubridy], those negotiations – as a result of all of this – were suspended.
‘So currently, as we said, we are still paying Ryan Tubridy and there are certain elements of the contract that are in dispute with the agent.’
The media committee grilled current and former members of the broadcaster’s executive over the nature of pay negotiations for Tubridy, RTE’s highest-paid member.
Breda O’Keeffe, the former chief financial officer at RTE, was asked by Brendan Griffin whether Tubridy refused to take a pay cut.
She said: ‘During my negotiations up to March 2020, they (Tubridy and agent) didn’t refuse to take a cut, it was the level of cut that we disagreed on. So there was a cut,’ she said.
She added: ‘When I left RTE, the level of fees that we were discussing were lower than he was earning under his contract. So he wasn’t rejecting (a cut).’
O’Keeffe also insisted she did not know of a commercial agreement involving Tubridy and Renault before she left in early 2020, only learning of it through media reports recently.
RTE had underwritten the deal, which resulted in the broadcaster paying €150,000 to Tubridy when Renault did not renew the arrangement in 2021 and 2022.
‘My recollection is that Mr Tubridy’s agent requested that the commercial agreement be underwritten by RTE and this was refused,’ she told the Media Committee.
Former director-general of RTE, Dee Forbes, was suspended from her position when the Scan**l first came to light, and has since announced her resignation, having already been due to step down from her position this month.
She said she was ‘ultimately responsible’ over the controversy.
It had been found that Tubridy had been paid several hundred thousand euros more than previously declared in addition to his usual salary throughout a period between 2017 and 2022, with the total amount reaching €345,000 (£296,653).
