RTÉ’s gothic saga is centre stage again... but political patience is wearing thin
IF the Government has any more bad news that needs burying, this week will be a good time to release it. The Greek dramatist Euripides was the first to warn that ‘those whom the Gods would destroy they first set mad’.
That madness surrounded the decision of the RTÉ board last week to go to war with Media Minister Catherine Martin over the resignation of their chairwoman, Siún Ní Raghallaigh. Once again, the trauma of a relatively minor radio and TV station will dominate the political landscape. It will provide us with more entertainment than RTÉ ever did, as a minister missing a chairperson deals with a rogue board – and a gothic debacle edging close to existential crisis.
Politicians have had their spats with RTÉ before. In 1972, the entire board were sacked at 10pm one night by Gerry Collins after RTÉ broadcast an interview with Seán Mac Stíofáin, then the Provos’ chief of staff.
The current board have been faring so well, even before the revolt, that the well-known voice of reason, Shane Ross, suggested that the dose should be repeated.
The former senator said if the people are to trust RTÉ again, the State broadcaster cannot continue with the same team. ‘If you’ve got the same people in charge of corporate governance as were there when these things happened, I don’t think we’re going to make any progress,’ he said.
Unsafe
After all the chaos, with an inert board failing to bark at debacles as diverse as the Rory Coveney exit payment, the Breda O’Keeffe exit payment, the Richard Collins exit payment, the disappearance of Dee Forbes and the state of fiscal and moral bankruptcy RTÉ finds itself in, they would be a scant loss to Irish corporate governance.
The board had been warned by the minister they were only safe ‘for now’ after the Grant Thornton report into Toy Show The Musical found the project, which lost them nearly €2.3million, was not signed off by the RTÉ board or the RTÉ Audit and Risk Committee. They are a lot more unsafe now. Should Ms Martin clear this lot out, the board will have colluded in their own destruction. Last week, Catherine Martin took out Siún Ní Raghallaigh live on Prime Time with an elan reminiscent of the Corleone family.
The most immediate troubles surround the astonishing démarche when, just before the minister held a press conference, on Friday, the RTÉ board issued a statement supporting Ms Ní Raghallaigh. The identity of these corporate warriors has been almost unknown until they started making regular treks to the Dáil PAC and Media Committees, where they spend their time staring at their boots. But the board decided now was the time to inform the minister they were ‘furious, insulted and fed up’. Then the board said they wanted a meeting with the minister. The meeting is this week but whether it works out the way they want is to be seen.
In the corporate and political world, certain realities exist and one of those is that if the board and the boss disagree then one or the other must go. It looks like the minister will be staying.
When it comes to the madness of the board, they must be experiencing some form of contagion from the governing ethos of the station RTÉ likes to define this ethos as ‘public-sector broadcasting’ but it’s more accurate to say the ethos is an endemic, cascading, infinite sense of entitlement. This rampant vice was most publicly evident in RTÉ’s loving use of the word ‘talent’ to describe the station’s special ones.
What has been revealed, thanks to the hard work of two humble Dáil committees, is that this sense of entitlement was running rampant across the station.
For RTÉ, the real core value of the upper tiers was that the rules as they apply to others never apply to you. This is not just centred on salaries, perks, flip-flops, access to Soho gentlemen’s clubs, Champions League tickets, declarations to the Revenue and the many bits and bobs of privilege. The station has evolved into a repository of nepotistic Dublin Bay South ‘right thinking’, which views with hostility anyone – especially rural or working-class – who does not embrace their definition of right thinking with hostility. The only way the madness of the board can be understood is that they have breathed in too much of this special ether, and believe they are special too.
Wary
It will be interesting to see if the board has bitten off more than they can chew. The minister has played a more cunning game than she has been credited with. She has correctly been wary about racing into RTÉ to sort it out, on the wise premise that this station is a fiscal and ethical marsh that drowns anything that enters. But while she is slow to act, as Siún discovered the hard way this week, when she does act it is decisive. In the wake of the departure, it became evident political patience with the mandarins of Montrose is wearing very thin. The Cabinet has united around Ms Martin. Clear messages have been sent that it is time RTÉ was brought back in under the tender embrace of the Comptroller and Auditor General, that the Government is fed up with these ungovernable broadcasting Doges. The board, before it continues its revolt, would be wise to consider the fate of the now ex-chair. Should the minister have to sack the board a week after the resignation of her chair it will create another intriguing dynamic: Suddenly the director general will start to look terribly isolated.