Tone-deaf overspending on exec luxuries while the average staff member struggled: ‘It was truly RTÉ’s Marie Antoinette moment’ Lavish of reign RTÉ’s Queen Dee
SHE was known by some during her time at RTÉ as ‘Queen Dee’, and the latest reports into what was allowed to come to pass at the State broadcaster during her reign appear to show why.
Ever since Dee Forbes left her post as director general in June last year and disappeared from public view, there’s been a drip-feed of information about the lavish spending by her and some of her executives.
But the release of this week’s report into the notorious barter accounts, details of which were first released in the Irish Mail on Sunday in 2019, tell a tale of corporate excess the likes of which has rarely – if ever – been seen in a semi-State body here before.
We already knew Ms Forbes presided over the most dysfunctional regime in RTÉ’s history, and now we also know it was one of the most extravagant as well.
The sheer entitlement of some executives, at a time when ordinary staff were being denied even access to a taxi to take them to and from a job, is something to behold, one RTÉ staff member told the MoS this week.
And it’s clear from the receipts that the forensic accountancy firm Mazars did manage to obtain (many were missing entirely), that the Ireland of RTÉ’s elite is not the Ireland of ordinary people.
There were no GAA tickets or cheap and cheerful meals in pubs or affordable hotels listed in the report. Instead, it was rugby, golf and top-end Dublin 2 and Dublin 4 restaurants, as well as the equivalent upmarket venues in London such as Soho House hotel and restaurant and the upmarket Marylebone Hotel.
The activities and proclivities of RTÉ’s top brass were much the same as those of an entitled, well-heeled Dublin 4 set.
The list of restaurants where RTÉ commercial executives and their clients ate all had two things in common – they were very exclusive and very expensive.
One Pico, Peploe’s, Glover Alley and Dax are the kind of restaurants where most people would go to celebrate a special event. But for some RTÉ staff, they seemed like an extension of the canteen.
And crucially, none of these restaurants – nor the hotels, nor any one of the other luxury service providers named in the report – was paid cash for its services.
Instead, they were given ads or granted other favours gratis by the publicly funded national broadcaster.
Likewise, the events to which the commercial department took ‘clients’ were all premium sporting occasions, the kind of thing that would be a once-in-a-lifetime event for most people.
As reported first in the MoS back in 2019, Geraldine O’Leary, ex-head of commercial operations, led a party of six on a business class trip to the Rugby World Cup in Japan that year.
Four unidentified ‘clients’ (there is no specific mention of who they were, nor for whom they were working), Ms O’Leary herself and another unnamed staff member went along for the ride. The entire shebang cost €73,000.
Mazars said the belated decision to attend the event meant the tickets, flights and hotels were always going to be very expensive, and so it transpired.
Geraldine O’Leary previously said the trip had been discussed with and approved by Ms Forbes.
When the MoS asked Ms Forbes about the trip two months after it took place in November 2019, at a time when she was announcing the biggest cutbacks in the
‘There was a lot of business done on that trip’
history of the organisation, she was dismissive, rolling her eyes at the RTÉ press officer who was sitting in on our interview before answering the question in an exasperated manner.
‘It’s a fact that in the commercial world we operate in, it’s the norm to entertain clients. There was a lot of business done on that trip and a lot of business will come from that trip. So yes, it was the right thing to do,’ she said. However, Mazars said that the absence of clear guidelines about such events, in respect of the class of flights and lack of ‘overall expenditure thresholds in respect of client hospitality and entertainment’, meant that they ‘could not reasonably evaluate the basis for approving this decision.
‘This is particularly relevant due to the high value of expenditure and the fact that it was not subject to expected purchasing controls within RTÉ due to the fact it was paid through the barter account.’
And there were more last-minute events, including the 2019 Champions League Final between Liverpool and Spurs in Madrid, when RTÉ’s commercial department again apparently got last-minute tickets for the gold-riband event.
As revealed in the MoS last month, RTÉ’s director of content, Jim Jennings, also travelled to that game on a junket but put his €1,100 expenses through the station’s normal accounting channels.
Geraldine O’Leary, who went on the trip with another staff member and four ‘clients’, put it through the barter account. And although they could only get seats on a Ryanair flight for the event, they made up for it with a €28,000 bill at the Pestana Hotel in downtown Madrid over a three-day trip.
As one RTÉ staffer observed this week: ‘They must have been drinking vintage champagne for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
‘The sheer extravagance is something to behold. And they were telling us we couldn’t afford to buy newspapers any more.’
There was another last-minute sports trip the same year when a member of the commercial department decided to go with a ‘client’ to the Republic of Ireland’s World Cup qualifier in Gibraltar at short notice. This two-day trip cost just under €5,000, more than most people’s annual family holiday.
Again, there was no mention of who the client was or why they were being taken to the event.
Crucially, Mazars found the barter account was used for expenses that could never be justified by any orthodox accounts department.
For example, when it was deemed that RTÉ’s commercial department needed a new office toaster, a contra-deal was done with electrical supplier Power City. Ditto for a new fridge for the same office.
When RTÉ held golf outings for dozens of ‘clients’ at the five-star Powerscourt Hotel in 2017 and 2018, McGuirks Golf was called upon to provide freebies for those who attended the events.
The report found that these and other junkets were paid for out of the barter account when there were no other budgets in place to support them.
The report noted that the barter account appeared to have been used as a slush fund – a reserve used to pay for luxuries.
It stated: ‘Mazars identified a number of barter purchases where we could not identify a valid basis for these purchases to have been paid through the barter account.
‘Such payments were not aligned to the purpose of the barter account as described to us by interviewees, and based on our own review of barter purchase transactions.
‘It would appear that the barter account was used to facilitate these payments due to no alternative budget being available, but that these payments should have been subject to expected purchase approvals and controls.’
The Mazars report also said it could not see the benefit to RTÉ of many of the items and services for which the broadcaster exchanged airtime.
‘In addition, we have noted several barter purchase transactions where the basis of approval of these purchases was not clear, due to these events being expensive in nature and the commercial benefit to RTÉ not being clear in the absence of a valid and documented assessment being performed or hospitality thresholds being in place – this includes (all amounts displayed at net barter value).’
But the report is definitive about who gave the sign-off.
‘Based on the documentation reviewed and as confirmed through the interviews conducted with current and former RTÉ staff the vast majority of barter purchase transactions were approved verbally, and it was confirmed to Mazars by interviewing both current and former staff that the approval was always sought and obtained from the former commercial director [Geraldine O’Leary] as the authoriser of the account.
‘In exceptional cases such as high value spending, the former commercial director sought additional verbal approval of the former director general [Dee Forbes].’
Ms Forbes refused to co-operate with the Mazars report, or the other two Government-commissioned reports published this week. A spokesman for the former director general this weekend said that she continued to be unwell. He denied that she was in hiding.
Given her current reticence, it’s necessary to look back to try to gain insight into what some of her thinking might have been.
When she was first appointed as director general, she told interviewers that the media had ‘always been a curiosity’ for her since it combined her interests in people, business and travel.
At Turner Broadcasting, where she had previously worked, Ms Forbes had ‘control of a very big budget and she had a sense of entitlement,’ a London contemporary told the MoS.
A member of the exclusive private members club Soho House before RTÉ ever took up membership, and a Gold British Airways Executive Club member, for Ms Forbes expensive clothes, fine art, five-star travel and designer watches became the norm.
But all of the above was fine, and even expected, in commercial broadcasting, an RTÉ manager said this week.
They told the MoS: ‘The problem was when it was played out in the public service broadcasting arena and where, in the case of RTÉ, ordinary workers hadn’t had a pay rise since 2008.
‘How they couldn’t see what they were doing was so wrong, so against the tone of the times, it’s hard to fathom.
‘It was truly RTÉ’s Marie Antoinette moment.’
‘The sheer extravagance is something to behold’