Key RTÉ voices have to be heard
Public Accounts Committee may seek legal power to summon former executives following controversies
Ms Forbes’s sick note was inspected
Questions as to Ms Cusack’s role
FORMER RTÉ executives Breda O’Keeffe, Rory Coveney and Moya Doherty face being compelled to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to answer for recent scandals.
The powerful public spending watchdog has decided that it is ready to seek legal powers to compel key witnesses who were party to the RTÉ controversies if they refuse to come before it.
The national broadcaster has recently published two reports into the failed Toy Show The Musical and a non-compliant exit package for the former chief financial officer, Ms O’Keeffe.
The committee is also set to demand an unredacted version of the Toy Show The Musical report, which featured contributions from 26 people who were unnamed.
The PAC is now keen to hear from
Ms O’Keeffe in the wake of the publication of the report which showed that she proposed the business case for her own redundancy package, which was given directly to the former director general, Dee Forbes, and never approved by the board. Independent solicitors investigating the matter for RTÉ found that Ms O’Keeffe’s job was not made redundant, as is required under law, but said this was the fault of RTÉ and not Ms O’Keeffe.
Former director general Ms Forbes has not been in a position to attend any hearings of the Oireachtas committees because of medical reasons.
The Irish Daily Mail understands that evidence of Ms Forbes’s sick note was inspected by the Oireachtas, which is satisfied of its validity. The PAC will not seek to compel Ms Forbes if she is medically unfit to testify.
Ms O’Keeffe had previously attended an Oireachtas committee hearing into the issues of governance failings over the €75,000 annual commercial deal for presenter Ryan Tubridy.
However, at the hearing where she attempted to account for the decision made about the extra payment to the Late Late Show presenter in his contract negotiations in 2019 and 2020, she revealed that she had left under a ‘voluntary restructuring programme’ .
She then refused several invitations to appear before the PAC again, after it was revealed under queries from politicians that she had left under a redundancy scheme that was not signed off by the executive board.
Members of the PAC are also keen to hear a direct account of the €2.2million loss-making musical from the former director of strategy, Rory Coveney, who was part of the team that brought the project to fruition. Mr Coveney is the brother of Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney.
The report into the commercial flop showed that the contract for the Convention Centre was signed before any presentation was made to the RTÉ board, which did not formally sign off on the project costing €2.9million.
Mr Coveney resigned from RTÉ days into the crisis when the national broadcaster admitted paying Mr Tubridy €345,000 more than was publicly disclosed. He has not appeared at any committee hearing into RTÉ since then.
The committee will also be calling the former chair of the RTÉ board, Moya Doherty, before it to question her about the musical.
The PAC also intends to invite Jim Jennings, former director of content, who was on sick leave during previous hearings.
Current and former board members who served when decisions about Toy Show the Musical were made will also be asked to appear.
The chair of the RTÉ board, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, has already written to the PAC to confirm her co-operation.
The committee also wants to hear from director general Kevin Bakhurst and two members of his current leadership team who served on the previous executive: deputy director general Adrian Lynch and director of HR Eimear Cusack. Ms Cusack was found to have written a letter to Ms O’Keeffe giving a legal basis to her redundancy package at the request of Ms Forbes, despite questioning the validity of the redundancy. The letter falsely claimed that the executive, on which Ms Cusack sits, had signed off on the package.
Media Minister Catherine Martin yesterday said she ‘emphasised’ to Mr Bakhurst that these executives need to be available to answer questions at the hearings and not be allowed to resign before then.
The anonymised report into the Toy Show musical names those involved only as person one to person 26, and the PAC now wants an unredacted version.
PAC member and Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon said it is ‘not plausible’ for RTÉ current and former executives and board members to come before it to discuss the report without knowing who is who.
The Mayo TD said there are questions as to Ms Cusack’s role after it was revealed in the review into exit packages that she was aware of the package given to Ms O’Keeffe.