Ryan Tubridy was very close to returning to “the job he loves” when a statement issued on his behalf on Wednesday brought everything crashing down.
The best-known presenter at the national broadcaster has had a traumatic time since the RTÉ board disclosed in June that his declared income over a period of six years was understated by a significant amount. But it is not hard to imagine that the events of the past few days have been as difficult as any he has faced to date.
Ironically, the events that brought his wished-for return to work crashing down began with the publication on Wednesday of a report that exonerated Tubridy from blame for how RTÉ came to publish incorrect figures in January 2021 for Tubridy’s income in the years 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The 79-page report from Grant Thornton accountant Paul Jacobs was published on Wednesday morning by the RTÉ board. “The report makes clear that neither Mr Tubridy nor NK Management [the company owned by Tubridy’s agent, Noel Kelly] had any involvement in the adjustments for the period 2017-2019,” a statement from RTÉ said.
Tubridy was not given an advance copy of the report. At lunchtime on Wednesday, public relations consultant Ray Gordon issued a statement on behalf of Tubridy in which the presenter welcomed its publication. It was a short statement and included the following line: “It is also clear that my actual income from RTÉ in 2020 and 2021 matches what was originally published as my earnings for those years and RTÉ has not yet published its top ten earner details for 2022.”
It was an assertion that many people would have paid little attention to, that Tubridy, and Kelly, had made before, that was factually correct from one point of view, and that was arguably supported by the Jacobs report that the RTÉ board had just published. But it undid everything.
Within hours word was drifting back to the Tubridy camp, via journalists, that RTÉ was unhappy with the sentence. The new director general of RTÉ, Kevin Bakhurst, who had refused to negotiate with Kelly, had since mid-July been involved in direct discussions with Tubridy to secure his return to work. Now Bakhurst decided to change tack, and to bring down the shutters on Tubridy’s return.
The remuneration committee of the RTÉ board had met on Wednesday, before Tubridy’s statement, to consider the deal to bring him back. It hadn’t made a decision, instead deferring to a full meeting of the board on Thursday. But almost as it met, the fateful statement was being issued, and by the time the board met the following day, the sands had shifted fundamentally.
[ What next for Tubridy? Will Newstalk come calling or will he go back to the BBC?Opens in new window ]
There were many in Radio One and elsewhere in RTÉ, including at senior level, who were against Tubridy returning to the station, but up to Wednesday Bakhurst had felt differently. Now he felt that the statement by Tubridy on Wednesday was a reopening of wounds that the station was seeking to close and constituted a breach of trust. The scales had shifted.
Bakhurst wrote to Tubridy’s solicitor, Joe O’Malley, on Wednesday evening, seeking clarification on the comment in Tubridy’s statement in relation to his 2020 to 2022 earnings. He got a response early the next day in which O’Malley said the statement made by Tubridy was based on a table contained in the Grant Thornton report.
“For the elimination of any doubt, our client was not in any way inferring that RTÉ was incorrect in relation to its restatements made in June 2023 in connection with the period 2017-2021,” the response said. “Certainly, our client had no intention of causing any difficulty for RTÉ in relation to his statement made yesterday.”
Bakhurst said that, up to Wednesday, he had wanted to bring Tubridy back even though a lot of people within RTÉ didn’t want this to happen
But it was too late. During Thursday Bakhurst consulted with members of his interim executive team and with the RTÉ board. The deal that he had all but concluded in his direct discussions with Tubridy was to be considered by the board on Thursday, but now that consideration did not occur. Bakhurst was already informing senior people inside RTÉ of this decision that Tubridy should not now return. Tubridy, who had first appeared on RTÉ as a teenager in 1989, doing TV book reviews on the Scratch Saturday programme, did not know it, but his desired return to his radio programme was already in tatters. On Thursday evening Bakhurst made contact with him, and delivered the bombshell news.
Later that evening, on RTÉ’s Prime Time, Bakhurst told Sarah McInerney that there had been no question, when he called Tubridy, of the presenter being offered an opportunity to undo the damage that had been done by the issuing of the Wednesday statement. “The decision had been made,” he said. “Ryan knows, I’ve spoken to him throughout this process about the need to take responsibility, to show the appropriate amount of contrition.”
The plan had been that Tubridy would return to his radio programme on September 4th and also do a podcast. He was to be paid €170,000 a year, a significant reduction in remuneration that, Bakhurst made clear, would have implications for other highly paid presenters at the station. Bakhurst said that, up to Wednesday, he had wanted to bring Tubridy back even though a lot of people within RTÉ didn’t want this to happen.
“I made it very clear to Ryan that there was quite a strong division of views, and this was never going to be an easy decision,” Bakhurst said. Tubridy was an extremely talented broadcaster but opinion about whether Tubridy should be invited back had always been “very strongly split and when I told Ryan that he was quite surprised”.
Bakhurst said his feelings about Tubridy’s return had been changed by the statement that had been issued on Wednesday. “I said this to Ryan, that I don’t think he has been well advised along the way.”
On Friday, during an interview on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Bakhurst told Audrey Carville he had felt “very strongly” up to Wednesday that trying to bring Tubridy back was the right thing to do, for listeners, for the station, and for Tubridy. However, he said, he had had a concern throughout his dealings with Tubridy that there was an issue about the presenter accepting his role in the payments controversy.
It had taken a while to get in contact with Tubridy on Thursday, Bakhurst said, as he believed Tubridy was out walking. When he was eventually contacted and told of the decision, the presenter was “shocked and disappointed”. Asked if Tubridy had seen it coming, Bakhurst said: “I don’t think he did.”
Tubridy has yet to comment publicly about the developments of the last few days and Tubridy’s spokesperson did not want to respond to Bakhurst’s statement that he believed the presenter had been badly advised in relation to his handling of the payments debacle. Bakhurst has said the door is not closed to an eventual return to RTÉ by Tubridy, but has refused to put that comment within any time frame. The Tubridy camp, it is understood, is amazed that what was considered an “anodyne” statement from Tubridy has had such consequences.
The effort to get Tubridy back on air has ended, for now, with almost as much drama as the events in June that saw him being taken off air in the first place
As part of the deal that Bakhurst had been negotiating with Tubridy, the presenter was to return €150,000 to the station (money associated with a commercial deal between RTÉ, Tubridy and the sponsor of The Late Late Show), but whether he will now do so is not clear. It is also unclear whether Tubridy is contemplating taking legal action against RTÉ, though it is obvious he feels significantly aggrieved about how RTÉ has handled a number of aspects of the payments debacle. It is also unclear when RTÉ will stop paying Tubridy, who was taken off air in June but is still being paid.
Meanwhile, a rash of no doubt hugely expensive inquiries and reports into RTÉ, its governance, and other matters, are continuing, while two Oireachtas committees plan to continue public hearings into the station later this year.
The effort to get Tubridy back on air has ended, for now, with almost as much drama as the events in June that saw him being taken off air in the first place. And it is obvious bad blood exists on both sides.
“I like him, I know him, he’s a decent guy, and I think he should have done a Marty Morrissey when the whole thing started and just come out and apologise,” said one senior RTÉ journalist, speaking off the record. “People just can’t understand how someone would put out a statement [on Wednesday] essentially saying, I was right all along.”
Bakhurst, on the other hand, according to the journalist, “has shown his mettle. He has a fair point when he says you can’t have people who want to work for RTÉ going off and issuing their own statements. People respect Bakhurst when he says no one individual is bigger than the station.”
The events of the past few days have increased the number of people in RTÉ who believe Tubridy should not return to the station, the journalist said. “On the other hand, Ryan Tubridy is an RTÉ man through and through, and people are very sad about it.”
