Report raises concerns over RTÉ subsidary’s governance
AN RTÉ subsidiary with an annual turnover of €16m was found to be operating without convening board meetings.
The newly-discovered governance failure is one of several concerns outlined in three Governmentcommissioned reports into RTÉ published this week.
The subsidiary is a limited company called RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC, which runs the RTÉ guide and holds a 50% stake in the controversial GAAGO pay-per-view service.
It is also the same firm through which the finances of the ill-fated Toy Show The Musical (TSTM) were channelled.
It was previously revealed that a ‘fictitious’ sponsorship entry relating to TSTM had been included in the accounts of this firm.
The apparent aim of the faked entry in the accounts of RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC was to falsely overstate the sponsorship income for the musical by €75,000.
But now it has emerged for the first time that RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC was failing to hold board meetings.
Instead, according to the review, the affairs of the company were ‘actually conducted within RTÉ’s Commercial
Division’. The lack of board meetings was discovered by governance expert Professor Niamh Brennan.
Her report stated: ‘When seeking clarification on the operation of RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC, we discovered that the Board of
RTÉ Commercial DAC had stopped convening.’
The governance review also revealed that the service level agreement between RTÉ and RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC was unsigned and undated.
RTÉ did not respond to specific queries about the concerns relating to RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC identified by the governance review.