Bakhurst asked to explain why rules on exit packages are being routinely broken
RTÉ boss still in spotlight over golden handshakes
KEVIN Bakhurst has been called on to explain why rules around exit packages at RTÉ were ‘routinely ignored and broken’.
The Irish Daily Mail reported yesterday that some members of the Cabinet are beginning to lose confidence in RTÉ’s director general due to the revelations over ‘golden handshakes’ granted to departing senior executives under his watch.
And while Taoiseach Leo Varadkar publicly backed Mr Bakhurst yesterday, some at the Cabinet table privately fear he is allowing a ‘culture of secrecy’ at the national broadcaster to continue.
The Government was blindsided by revelations of an estimated €200,000 exit package given to former head of strategy Rory Coveney. Details of a separate exit deal given to former chief financial officer Richard Collins remain under wraps thanks to a confidentiality agreement.
Now vice chair of the Oireachtas Media Committee and Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon has said that RTÉ ‘adopted an à la carte’ approach to fashioning golden handshakes for top executives. Mr Dillon said that some executives received ‘massive sums, which were kept entirely secret’. He told the Mail: ‘We only found out in the last seven days about two such payments and are still waiting for full details about these and all other exit deals since 2016.’
Mr Bakhurst has said he will seek further external legal advice about how much detail he can divulge around these packages. He said Mr Collins ‘was paid to leave’ in October last year but it came with a ‘confidentiality agreement’. A Cabinet source told the Mail: ‘Bakhurst has allowed himself to, rather than remove the past culture of secrecy he’s become part of it. He had the ability to be transparent about the exits in the summer and say he needed to refresh his executive and that there would be a cost to that. Instead he clouded and undermined his position by trying to conceal it.
‘His statements in the summer [stating people who got paid to leave ‘resigned’] did not chime with what actually happened. That’s a problem.
‘It creates the impression of a dysfunctional and chaotic organisation, his credibility has been seriously undermined and we’re left wondering what else do we not know about?’ Asked if they believed Mr Bakhurst’s position was untenable, the source said ‘we’re not there yet’.
Fine Gael parliamentary party chairman Mr Dillon said that the RTÉ chief should explain why ‘rules were routinely ignored and broken at the broadcaster with regard to exit packages, rather than wrongly claiming he is being asked to break the law by divulging this information’.
Earlier this week Mr Bakhurst said he was ‘being asked by elected officials to break the law’ in relation to revealing the details of the exit payments. ‘Can Mr Bakhurst show me where elected officials asked him to break the law?’ Mr Dillon asked.
‘Only RTÉ are privy to what occurred with exit packages and if there were non-disclosure agreements or confidentiality clauses.’
Mr Dillon noted that the taxpayer is ‘on the hook for’ the estimated €200,000 exit payment given to Mr Coveney, who is a brother of Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney.
He also noted how an investigation
‘Massive sums were kept secret’ ‘Will this come back to bite me’
into a €450,000 redundancy payment given to the former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe was not compliant with RTÉ’s exit scheme and was not signed off by the entire Executive.
‘When the licence fee had fallen off the cliff, when you know the future of RTÉ was being called into question and then exit packages being agreed with confidentiality clauses, politically it was a misinformed decision by Kevin Bakhurst to do that,’ he said.
Fellow member of the media committee Christopher O’Sullivan said that Mr Bakhurst’s decision not to brief the Government on the packages ‘lacked foresight’ and said it was a ‘tone deaf’ move. He said: ‘It’s not the norm for RTÉ to brief the Government on exit packages, but none of this was normal.’
The Fianna Fáil TD said Mr Bakhurst ‘should have asked himself “will this come back to bite me?” The answer would have been yes, if this comes out, it will prolong the pain and suffering.’