Taoiseach ‘very concerned’ by RTÉ statement and announcement that Director General Dee Forbes has been suspended

In a statement issued this evening, Mr Varadkar said he will be keeping in touch with Arts and Media Minister Catherine Martin, who will brief the Cabinet on Tuesday following a meeting with the chair of RTÉ Siún Ní Raghallaigh tomorrow.

It comes after Ryan Tubridy apologised “wholeheartedly” to his colleagues in RTÉ for what he has today described as “my error of judgment”.

Ms Forbes issued her own statement earlier today saying she found yesterday “an extremely difficult day” and defending her record.

Mr Varadkar said the public are right to expect “high standards of transparency and accountability” from RTÉ.

“On the face of it, there has been a serious breach of trust and truth between RTÉ and the Government, the Oireachtas and the people,” he said.

“At tomorrow’s meeting, the Minister will be asking the Chairperson to set out in detail the issues involved and the steps the RTÉ Board is taking.

“The Government considers it essential that we have the highest standards of governance, accountability and transparency from RTÉ and will consider what further action may be required.

“All of the matters involved will have to be examined and, perhaps, remedial steps taken to restore trust and confidence.

“It will be equally important for the Board to demonstrate that it is putting in place appropriate structures and processes to prevent a recurrence.

“It is extremely important that we can all have trust in our public service broadcasting.”

Having originally said he couldn’t shed any light on the controversy, Tubridy has now issued a second statement in which he seeks to explain his position.

He admits knowing the pay figures released by RTÉ were inaccurate but says he never questioned the broadcaster over this or sought to correct the record.

“While I have no responsibility for the corporate governance in RTÉ or how or what they publish in their accounts, when my earnings were published I should have asked questions at the time and sought answers as to the circumstances which resulted in incorrect figures being published.

“I didn’t, and I bear responsibility for my failure to do so. For this, I apologise unreservedly,” he said.

In the new statement, he expressed regret that RTÉ has decided not to let him present his radio show next week.

"I am disappointed that RTÉ has decided that for editorial reasons I should not broadcast my radio show next week. I look forward to returning to the radio show, a job I love, as soon as possible and I hope my listeners and my colleagues appreciate my sincerity on this,” he said.

The statement added: “At the centre of all of this is trust. The trust of colleagues in RTÉ and the trust of a great many people who listen to my show. To them: I wholeheartedly apologise for my error of judgment.”

Mr Tubridy goes on to defend his pay and his willingness to take reductions while RTÉ was facing wider cutbacks.

“Separately, it has been reported that I did not take a pay cut over the last number of years. This is simply not true. Over the period of my contract with RTÉ, I have been asked to take several reductions in salary and I did. Indeed, between 2012 and today, my pay from RTÉ was cut by approximately 40pc.

“I also wish to respond to suggestions that this issue had some bearing on my decision to step down from hosting the Late Late Show. It did not.”

RTÉ Deputy Director General Adrian Lynch said this issue has caused “significant reputational damage” to RTÉ.

Speaking on the Six One News programme this evening, Mr Lynch said he was unaware that Ryan Tubridy’s earnings had been understated.

Mr Lynch said he was shocked by this revelation and that RTÉ staff are outraged.

“I found this out last Monday, we were contacted by the chair of the board and called to an emergency meeting, and we were given the details of what had occurred,” he said.

“I just want to say, that I was deeply shocked. It’s a massive breach of trust with the public, it’s also a massive breach of trust with our staff. This is a corporate governance issue of significant proportions.

“RTÉ staff are outraged by this, they have the public interest at the centre of their job every day, so I’m deeply saddened by that.

“The two key issues are how is this money paid and how is it declared. I knew nothing about either of those. These are the issues that need to be resolved. There is a process ongoing in relation to that.

“We need to be mindful obviously of individual rights, due process and that it should be fair, but the chair was very clear that there needs to be accountability.

“I have been provided with the report that was done by Grant Thornton and basically that investigation went on for 12 weeks.

“I found out about this last Monday, I received the report on Wednesday, it is a report on the facts of what has happened.

“The chair has been very clear and we’re going to work together to make sure that as information becomes available, we will share it with the public.”

Mr Lynch said the decision for Mr Tubridy not to host his radio show next week was an editorial move in order to remain objective.

“It’s for editorial reasons, RTÉ as the public service media organisation cannot have an individual on air who is at the centre of public controversy,” he said.

“We have obligations to be independent and objective so you can’t do a show where it opens up with what it says in the papers where you’re the centre of that story.

“I was out of the country this week; I got the report and was trying to understand myself what has actually happened here. I was flying last night otherwise I would have been on the Six One.

“I think we need to rebuild trust here, we need to provide answers. This has done significant reputational damage to RTÉ. This is a corporate governance issue, this is not an issue of RTÉ staff in terms of the quality of output that is produced by the national broadcaster every day of the week.”

Earlier, it emerged RTÉ’s Director General Dee Forbes had been suspended from her job on Wednesday.

Having said on Monday that she had just gone on annual leave, the broadcaster has now revealed she was “suspended from her employment” two days ago.

Ms Forbes has responded by saying she fully engaged with the board since the issue first arose.

She participated in the review into payments of €75,000 made to the presenter in 2021 and 2022.

"Yesterday was an extremely difficult day for all of us who care deeply about the organisation and the impact of these issues is a matter of profound regret,” she said.

"I am proud of my contribution to RTÉ over the past seven years. Throughout my tenure as Director General, I have always prioritised what I believe are the best interests of the organisations, in order to best serve the public. This includes pursuing a difficult cost-cutting agenda as part of implementing a wider strategic agenda, all while navigating the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic,” Ms Forbes said.

When RTÉ chairperson Siún Ní Raghallaigh appeared on RTÉ’s Six One news bulletin yesterday, she did not reveal Ms Forbes had been suspended the previous day.

Forbes is due to end her seven-year tenure in early July but the Irish Independent understands she held a leaving party last week.

This morning the former chair of the RTÉ board Moya Doherty said neither she nor other members of the broadcaster’s board knew anything about hundreds of thousands of euro in additional payments to Tubridy.

“At no time during my tenure as chair of the RTE board did I, or other members of the board, have knowledge of any issue relating to certain payments and the profoundly serious lack of transparency involved.

“The matters which have come to light go to the heart of a failure of good corporate governance,” she said.

She said the board should have been “comprehensively briefed on all aspects of the payments and the manner in which they were dealt with in the accounts”.

"The reputation of RTE has sadly been damaged and this most serious situation is deeply upsetting and unsettling for the many staff, in all aspects of the work of RTE who give their best to the national broadcaster with their talent and their commitment,” Ms Doherty said.

Also today, the chairperson of the Dail’s Public Accounts Committee heavily criticised RTÉ for the money secretly paid to Tubridy.

Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley said Ms Forbes and other top executives spoke to the committee across the last years and gave “firm commitments that pay across the top 10 presenters was being reduced”.

Mr Stanley said the additional payments were made at a time when RTÉ came to the Public Accounts Committee “pleading that the finances were in such bad shape”.

“When you deliberately seek to hide money, when you deliberately seek to misrepresent the accounts, be it for whatever sum of money – €345,000 in this case – that’s actually fraudulent accountancy,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

“This isn’t happening in any kind of a dodgy back-street operation, this isn’t Del Boy and Rodney, this was happening in the national broadcaster and I’m personally very, very disappointed.”

Mr Stanley said until yesterday only a “very small few” people knew about the payment arrangement and questions needed to be answered with complete transparency.

“We need to know who set this up, and who signed off on it and who knew about it, who gave it the green light and why were we misled? Not once, but a number of times by the senior people in RTÉ, including Dee Forbes, and are there other cases out there at the moment,” he said.

However, Mr Stanley said Ms Forbes was “still in the pay” of RTÉ and she was the “very first person” from whom the committee would need to hear.

He said the scandal meant any possibility of increasing the licence fee was “completely off the radar”, and he did not believe “anyone would countenance” such a move at this time.

“What we need to see here now, we need to 100pc upfront disclosure. Not bits and pieces, not news management,” he said.

“We’re told the board did not know about this. This is absolutely shocking stuff what’s gone on here. It’s complete concealment. It’s completely fraudulent accountancy. I've never seen anything like it, in my days looking at accounts of different organisations. If it's only the local residents’ association, you wouldn't run it like this,” he added.

In a statement issued in response to Mr Stanley’s comments, RTÉ said while it “misrepresented information, there is no fraud”.

Speaking on the same programme, RTÉ Trade Union Group secretary Cearbhall Ó Síocháin said officers and officials of the trade union group had been invited to a briefing yesterday at 2.30pm on "short notice".

He said they spent roughly 30 minutes going through the report, after which a statement was released by the broadcaster.

Mr Ó Síocháin said trade union members at RTÉ have reacted with “shock, dismay, disbelief, anger” since the news broke.

“It was largely one of fury, disappointment, yet another own goal and an avoidable real catastrophe almost,” he said.

Mr Ó Síocháin said his members were also looking for full engagement with the board of management, so they could find out “why and how did this happened” and “why and how was this not spotted over six years”.

Comedian Oliver Callan sat in for Ryan Tubridy on his usual radio spot at 9am today.

At the top of the programme, Callan said RTÉ had served up a scandal with a "sprinkle of shambles” for the newspapers.