High time for Dee Forbes to face questions on RTE crisis
BRENDA Power (Mail, Friday) delineates in her own inimitable, empathic style the much-asked question as to where Dee Forbes, former RTÉ director general, is.
It was on Ms Forbes’s watch that many of the RTÉ elites were behaving egregiously. One would feel for her if is she is medically not herself. However, the optics of Ms Forbes not uttering a word on this scandal do not sit easy with me. Ms Power is correct in highlighting that the former DG’s fingerprints are all over the palpable poor governance pertaining to RTÉ. As one of the most prominent players in this fiasco she is becoming more and more conspicuous by her absence.
I can understand why RTÉ staff are raging over redundancy deals signed off by Ms Forbes while this entity was falling apart.
The Public Accounts Committee is now requesting that she attends the final hearings. If Ms Forbes is physically unable to attend, why not conduct this hearing through an online medium?
Ms Forbes joined RTÉ in 2016 on a seven-year contract. She was in receipt of a fat salary and at the time I remember her saying that this job was an opportunity of a lifetime. During 2021, Ms Forbes had a basic salary of €225,000 and let’s not forget that she enjoyed a car allowance of €25,000, which along with pension contributions of €56,000 brought her salary to an eye-watering total of €306,000.
This salary is on a totally different planet to that of the ordinary man and woman in this country.
We would have expected someone to run this entity as if she were minding her own finances.
Ms Forbes must remember her salary was paid by the licence fee payers. Let me again reiterate that many of these subscribers are themselves struggling to make ends meet; that is why Ms Forbes must now come out and answer questions apropos her time as the director general of RTÉ. The American singer Kenny Loggins uttered the following words which I find apposite to same: ‘Running away will never make you free.’
JOHN O’BRIEN, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.