One of the remaining questions to be answered arising from the RTÉ controversy is how Ryan Tubridy’s decision in 2020 not to seek a €120,000 bonus he was entitled to ended up adding to his troubles.
The controversy erupted on June 22nd with a statement from the RTÉ board about the substantial public understatement of its top-paid presenter’s earnings in the period 2017 to 2022.
The statement was widely summarised as correcting an understatement of Tubridy’s earnings by €345,000 during a period when staff across the station were being asked to stomach wage cuts, and it led to a massive blow to public trust in the station.
In his appearances before two Oireachtas committees last week, Tubridy argued that a number of “untruths” have taken hold in relation to the controversy over his income, including in relation to the €120,000 bonus issue.
In late 2019, as his then five-year contract was coming to an end, Tubridy’s agent, Noel Kelly, engaged with top executives at RTÉ about the renewal of his client’s contract with the station against a backdrop where the then director general, Dee Forbes, was under pressure to deliver cutbacks.
When the negotiations were over, Tubridy had agreed he would not be seeking payment of a €120,000 bonus or loyalty fee due at the end of his old contract. He would be entering into a new contract where he would get paid less for his delivery of TV and radio services over the coming five years but would be doing public appearances for Renault, the sponsor of The Late Late Show, for which he would be receiving €75,000 a year, not from RTÉ but from the sponsor.
RTÉ has a practice of periodically releasing the details of how much it is paying its 10 top-paid presenters, doing so in a back-dated manner. Before such lists are published, they are reviewed by a range of executives, including the director general, and the station’s auditors. In January 2021, RTÉ published figures for its top 10 earners for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019.
The public disclosure understated Tubridy’s actual earnings over the three years by €120,000. It appears this was because the presenter’s decision not to seek the €120,000 bonus cited in his expired contract was treated in RTÉ's books in such a way that the amount of money he had actually received was reduced in the published figures. Tubridy’s stated earnings were reduced by €20,000 for 2017, and €50,000 for each of the following two years. The logic for doing this is still not clear.
Tubridy and his agent have said they objected in private in 2020 to RTÉ about the plan to treat his income in this way in the accounts. They said they thought their argument had been accepted and were surprised when the station went ahead and publicly understated Tubridy’s earnings in January 2021. Tubridy has apologised for not speaking out about the matter after the incorrect figures were made public.
In its statement in June last, the RTÉ board corrected the January 2021 declaration, and increased Tubridy’s stated earnings for 2017, 2018, and 2019 to the amounts that he had actually been paid.
[ Ryan Tubridy may come to regret hitching his wagon to Noel Kelly’sOpens in new window ]
The board statement also dealt with three €75,000 payments that Tubridy has received in the period since his new contract was signed. RTÉ now says this money came directly or indirectly from the station, so should be added to Tubridy’s earnings for the years concerned. Tubridy says he only learned in June of this year that RTÉ, and not Renault, had made the payments.
In February of this year, RTÉ released its list of top 10 earners for the years 2020 and 2021. The figures released in the board statement in June cite new figures for these two years that include one so-called Renault payment for each year. No public statement as to Tubridy’s earnings in 2022 was released before the June statement from the RTÉ board, which allocated a €75,000 payment to this year also.
It is the addition of these three €75,000 figures, and the €120,000, that gives rise to the figure of €345,000, which is being widely cited as the totality of the understatement of Tubridy’s earnings from RTÉ for the period 2017 to 2022.
In his appearance before the Dail Public Accounts Committee on July 11th, Tubridy said that because of how RTÉ reported his decision to forego the €120,000 bonus in its accounts, “the narrative of the last three weeks has been that not only did I take this payment, but that I somehow contrived to hide it”.
The RTÉ board has commissioned Grant Thornton to inquire into how it came about that the public declaration of Tubridy’s earnings for the 2017 to 2019 period came to understate his actual earnings.
“As I understand it, Grant Thornton is interviewing people in relation to this and it is dependent on people being available, but we hope to have the final report soon,” the chair, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, told Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon at a meeting of the PAC two days after Tubridy’s appearance.
