Reveal the senior RTÉ names in Musical saga
Dáil Media Committee demands redacted details be unveiled
THE Oireachtas Media Committee has demanded that RTÉ reveals the names of senior staff members featured in a heavily redacted report on the €2.2million flop Toy Show The Musical.
The report found the lossmaking commercial venture was not formally approved by the RTÉ Board, as required, but failed to name any of the 26 people involved in the process.
The committee wrote to RTÉ yesterday requesting that the members are given the names of the individuals, referred to only as Person One through to Person 26, by midday next Thursday.
The deadline for the handover
‘RTÉ gave up without a fight’
comes as the committee has contacted RTÉ to invite the entire board before it, along with director general Kevin Bakhurst, deputy director general Adrian Lynch and director of human resources Eimear Cusack.
Politicians on the committee have also invited former executives Dee Forbes, Rory Coveney, Jim Jennings, Breda O’Keeffe, Richard Collins and Geraldine O’Leary, along with former members of the Board Moya Doherty, Ian Kehoe and Conor Murphy. The hearing is set for St Valentine’s Day.
TDs are keen to grill the former director of strategy Mr Coveney, who was part of the team that spearheaded the project on Toy Show The Musical, along with the former chair of the board Ms Doherty, who presided over the broadcaster at the time of decision-making around the musical.
Ms Doherty, who was the chair of the RTÉ Board for eight years, is known for the commercial success of Riverdance, which she co-founded.
The report by independent auditors Grant Thornton found the musical, that was costed at €2.9million, was not signed off by the RTÉ Board or its audit and risk committee and there was a lack of interrogation of the finances and projected audience numbers.
The production aimed to reach an audience of 104,000 across 54 shows in Dublin’s Convention Centre over Christmas 2022, however only 11,044 tickets were sold.
The report also found that the contract with the 1,995-seat Convention Centre was signed before the full board was briefed on the venture. The report authors told all those who contributed to the report they would be given anonymity. The anonymised report is the only version that has been provided to the RTÉ Board and Media Minister Catherine Martin.
Politicians are also eager to quiz the former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe on her exit from RTÉ after it was revealed this week the redundancy package she received was not compliant with the terms of the 2017 Voluntary Exit Programme (VEP) in RTÉ.
The report found that Ms O’Keeffe’s redundancy package was the only one not considered and approved by the Executive Board as was required under the rules of the 2017 VEP.
The report authors also highlighted that HR chief Ms Cusack was aware of the redundancy package for the CFO three years before the Ms O’Keeffe ultimately left. Ms Cusack issued Ms O’Keeffe with the formal letter offering her the redundancy package, which said it had been signed off on by the board, ‘on instruction’ of the former DG Ms Forbes.
Fine Gael TD and Media Committee member Brendan Griffin said he is most concerned to find out the names of those referred to in the report. ‘We as a committee need to know and the Oireachtas needs to know who is responsible for what. We need to know of the people who are still in situ, if they were responsible for major failings in relation to this.’
Mr Griffin also wants RTÉ executives to explain why they abandoned outside advertising when the scandal hit the broadcaster. The TD said this was evidence that RTÉ ‘gave up without a fight on the TV licence fee’.