Neither was he named in the “barter account” through which the payments were processed. One of the most revealing passages in the report by Grant Thornton partner Paul Jacobs shows two invoices for RTÉ's payment last year of €150, “consultancy fees” to Tubridy did not mention his name. The actual cost recorded in RTÉ's barter account was €47,477.īy the time of the events in question, Renault had already withdrawn from the deal and RTÉ had to pay Tubridy €75,000 per year in lieu of money he would otherwise received from Renault. Not only was the Tubridy deal with Renault Ireland “cost neutral” to the car company, the State broadcaster turns out to have borne an additional €30,586 for the costs of delayed commercial sponsor events in 2022 for which Tubridy received €75,000 in 2020. Not that that will spike the politicians’ guns there is plenty in Lynch’s statement and the Grant Thornton report to show the extraordinary efforts undertaken to provide additional money to Tubridy and conceal that fact within and outside RTÉ. That stance is upheld in the statement issued in the name of RTÉ interim deputy director general Adrian Lynch, which draws assorted Montrose figures onto the stage. Her position is that she did not act alone in agreeing special fees for Tubridy that have thrust RTÉ into a firestorm of controversy.
But if Forbes won’t be seen in Leinster House, she is all over RTÉ's statement and all over the Grant Thornton report on Tubridy’s pay that the broadcaster released at the same time.
Notably absent from that gathering will be Dee Forbes, the former RTÉ director general who signalled on Tuesday that she cannot attend the committee for health reasons. In the heat of drama over the affair, this will be a lightning rod when the Oireachtas media committee demands answers from RTÉ at a politically-charged hearing on Wednesday afternoon. While providing abundant detail on the background to the disputed arrangements, it fails to explain why the national broadcaster published misleading information for years about the star presenter’s fees. The most basic fact remains unknown after RTÉ's latest statement on Ryan Tubridy’s unorthodox pay deal in 2020.
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