The chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee has said the role of agent Noel Kelly in the negotiations for the Ryan Tubridy pay deal with RTÉ needed to be explained.
It appeared that an outside agent was calling the shots, Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland. “He had way more influence than he should have.”
Mr Stanley also told Newstalk Breakfast that today’s PAC meeting would be hoping for “more credible” answers than had been given at Wednesday’s Media Committee meeting with representatives of RTÉ.
The replies on Wednesday appeared to suggest that “all these senior people operate in silos even though they all belong to the one company, housed on the one campus. Listening to them you would think they lived in different countries,” he told Morning Ireland.
Governance at RTÉ seemed to be “bizarre” particularly in relation to responsibility, accountability, financial systems and practices with “absolutely bizarre and costly methods” of doing transactions and making payments.
“There's an awful lot of information you have to be dug into and to be uncovered in relation to all of this.”
It was not credible that all the responsibility for this “lay at the feet” of former director general Dee Forbes.
There were nine members of the board of the authority, how could all of them have remained “in the dark” and not question the “unusual transactions.”
Mr Stanley said that further investigation was also required into the role of “NK Communications and Noel Kelly.”
“One of the things that came out of the Grant Thornton report was the actual power of Noel Kelly, the fact that in the final stages, in fact, at the final hurdle in the negotiations, he sent across the draft letter for the seniors in RTÉ to sign it.
“You have an outside agent actually calling the shots, having influence way beyond the way it should work.
“But I think the big question as well that has to be answered is, why in the name of God, did anybody feel that Ryan Tubridy would walk as he was getting €495,000.
“Where exactly would he have walked to? Who was going to pay him more than that on the island of Ireland? So you could say he might have went to England? That perhaps is the case. But are there stations in England that scarce of people that they would poach from Ireland. I think it's ridiculous the whole scenario that is being presented.”
The senior RTÉ people coming before the PAC today had been in situ during the period of the negotiations for the Tubridy deal. “I think they will have answers. They have had the opportunity to get the answers to this over the last week, if they don’t have it at their fingertips it's not credible.”
