O’Keeffe payout would cover the cost of most houses – except hers

THE €450,000 golden handshake paid to RTÉ’s former chief financial officer, Breda O’Keeffe, would be more than enough to buy a family home in most parts of the country – bar the more expensive parts of Dublin.

Average prices nationwide hover between a low of €160,000 in Donegal and a high of €511,000 in Dublin’s sought-after addresses.

But based on recent sales in the same area, Ms O’Keeffe’s Dún Laoghaire home is worth considerably more, at an estimated €1.5m.

Ms O’Keeffe shares the home with her husband John Clear, and is also known as Breda Clear.

The couple are directors of a consultancy firm called Protea Financial Services, which is owned by Ms O’Keeffe. The firm was incorporated in April 2021 after Ms O’Keeffe left RTÉ and is owned entirely by her.

As of March 2023, Protea posted accounts showing €45,000 ‘cash at bank’ went towards directors’ salaries, payroll taxes and VAT. The company has not yet made any profit.

After leaving RTÉ, Ms O’Keeffe took up a finance position with the Blackrock Clinic and was a director of half a dozen firms related to the hospital.

Since her appearance before the Oireachtas Communications Committee last year, she has deleted her LinkedIn profile and it is not known if she is still working with the clinic.

However, she resigned as a director of all Blackrock Clinic firms in July 2023 when details of her controversial redundancy first became public.

After leaving RTÉ in early 2020, Ms O’Keeffe took charge of the Abbey Theatre’s audit and risk committee as it dealt with its own payments controversy.

An independent audit into the Abbey’s handing of the affair confirmed expenditure of €700,000 on termination payments and associated legal fees to two departing executives had been incurred between 2019 and 2021.

The Mazars report was

commissioned by the Arts Council in late 2021 after it heard, third hand, of the payments which took place in June 2021.

Ms O’Keeffe’s precise role in the Abbey payments affair is not known.

However, she headed the theatre’s audit and risk committee until July 2021 when she left to take up an employment opportunity at the Blackrock Clinic.