Looked like they had a licence to do as they please at RTE

✱THE death of Ian Bailey at the weekend means that the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier will never be solved.

Unless the former journalist turned poet left a confession note among his few belongings it is unlikely the French filmmaker’s family will ever receive justice.

I spoke to him a few times down the years and I always found him an affable enough man and never short of a few words, especially when he had a few drinks on board.

But he also had a darker side and while it can never be proved he killed Ms du Plantier, he wasn’t the prime suspect for nothing.

On the other hand, the way the case was initially handled by the gardai was a disgrace so it wasn’t surprising there was never a conviction.

THE long-suffering public probably didn’t need another reason not to pay their TV licence but true to form RTE has just handed them one.

A report out yesterday has found that there is no evidence that the Board of RTE ever approved giving the green light to “Toy Show the Musical”.

Like many other bodies that supposedly oversee State entities it seems the RTE Board was there for simply decorative or ornamental reasons.

But what does it really matter because the same report, true to form, does not name anyone in connection to the €2.2million box office flop.

To add to RTE’S woes there have been recent claims that the Government discussed plans for replacing the TV licences with a €15 monthly tax applied to broadband bills it appears that the scandals of last year will again haunt the coming one.

This is an old chestnut that was first mooted by Labour communications minister Pat Rabbitte during the austerity coalition with Fine Gael but was quietly dropped and will be again by the current government because of the public backlash.

Still, just how do you blow €2.2million of licence payers’ money on a dud musical without any questions, or even eyebrows, being raised?

Unfortunately, like many of the other scandals emanating, or which have still to emanate, from RTE we will probably never know because those responsible have not been named.

A report into the debacle that was Toy Show The Musical has found there is no written record of the RTE Board ever granting its approval for the disastrous production. The probe by independent audit firm Grant Thornton said there was an obligation on the RTE Board to give clearance for the venture but this apparently never happened.

It also found no formal consideration of the doomed project until after a contract was signed with the Convention Centre where it was to take place.

In effect, those who were running RTE acted as a law unto themselves and didn’t believe they were answerable to anyone.

The report also found that the recording of the show’s sponsorship money was “not in line with generally accepted accounting practices”.

You could look at this another way, and many accountants would, and call what happened in a much less benign way and one that could land you in court.

It’s a funny old system we have in this country, if you don’t pay your TV licence you are named and shamed in the local paper and could face jail if you don’t cough up.

On the other hand if you splurge €2.2million – the equivalent of 13,750 licence fees – on a daft production that was never going to break even you can remain anonymous.

And to think we’d be none the wiser to any of this if not for the disclosure about overpayments to Ryan Tubridy last spring.

No doubt Mr Tubridy is glad to be away from it all and working with Virgin Radio on a contract that reportedly earns him around €90,000 a year.

It’s one hell of a fall in income from the halcyon days back 2012 when he was on a salary of over €750,000.

For years this column and others had been pointing out that the RTE “talent” were vastly overpaid for broadcasting to a country with a population of just over five million.

Last summer at the Dail Committee hearings into the RTE payments scandal it was revealed that some of the executives who had been in place at the time that Toy Show The Musical was conceived and produced were also on astronomical salaries.

Going by the damning findings of the Grant Thornton report it would appear that there was a very limited pool of talent among these executives who should never have received such obscene salaries.

While the latest report sheds some light on how a national broadcaster should not be run it does little else.

Yesterday the chair of RTE’S board, Siun Ni Raghallaigh apologised for a “significant lapse in oversight” of Toy Show The Musical and committed to changes in governance so it would not happen again.

Unfortunately the public have grown tired of listening to that old “lessons learned” mantra.

Ironically just before Brian Dobson’s interview with Ni Raghallaigh on RTE’S News at One there was an advert warning the public to pay their TV licence.

With 13,750 licence fees blown on a disastrous musical and no one held to account, good luck with that.

How do you blow €2.2m of licence payers’ money without eyebrows raised