Cliff Taylor: Understanding the two sums of money that tell the story of Tubridy’s downfall

The curious tale of two sums of money – €120,000 and €150,000 – dominated the week. These are the amounts by which Ryan Tubridy’s pay was understated, first between 2017 and 2019 and then in 2020 and 2021. To get a grip on this, we need to treat these as two separate but interlinked stories, the first an accountancy whodunit, the second the now-familiar tale of Renault and the barter accounts, played out before the Oireachtas committees.

The €120,000 saga, was – and is – RTÉ’s problem, a manoeuvre that reduced the earnings of its top presenter below €500,000 for each year between 2017 and 2019. The €150,000, the understatement of Tubridy’s earnings in 2020 and 2021 due to the Renault deal, has now turned into the presenter’s problem. In his statement after the Grant Thornton report he should have stuck to the story of the €120,000. Instead, by reopening the saga of the later payment he dealt a fatal blow to the negotiations on his return.

Tubridy could have taken a one-all draw. First, accept that the Renault deal was an unwise route on all sides, a contrivance too far. One down. Second, point out that the earlier understatement from 2017 to 2019 was not his problem, but was, as the second Grant Thornton report on the issue pointed out this week, most likely a device designed by RTÉ to reduce his reported pay levels. A late equaliser.

His apparent willingness to repay the €150,000 he received via the Renault deal as part of a new agreement with RTÉ would then, conceivably, have drawn a line under the whole thing.

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Instead, Tubridy tried to go for a late winner by arguing a purely semantic point. His statement, issued after the Grant Thornton report came out, said: “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.”

The decision by Tubridy and his advisers to wake the sleeping dog of the Renault deal is perplexing, despite their earlier insistence that the Renault deal was somehow separate from the contract with RTÉ

The amount paid from the RTÉ payroll system to Tubridy was, indeed, equal to what was shown in the original high earners’ report, before it was adjusted by the board. But the figures were restated due to the Renault deal, which was funded not from RTÉ's payroll but from the now-infamous barter account. And Grant Thornton has found that the board’s restatement, counting this as part of Tubridy’s pay, was correct, as in the end RTÉ picked up the tab.

The reason Bakhurst was so annoyed was that he felt Tubridy was not accepting the restated figures, even though Tubridy’s camp said on Friday that they made clear that this was not the case. Either way, the decision by Tubridy and his advisers to wake the sleeping dog of the Renault deal is perplexing, despite their earlier insistence that the deal was somehow separate from the contract with RTÉ.

It is unfortunate that Dee Forbes, the former director general, has not been available to give her view on the origin and motivation of the Renault deal. And that RTÉ has claimed legal privilege in relation to a note of key discussions on the deal during an online call in May 2020 between Forbes and Kelly, which might well have thrown light on this.

Extraordinary machinations

The story of the earlier €120,000 understatement of Tubridy’s earnings from 2017 to 2019 does not have the rock‘n’roll of the Renault affair, the barter account and invoices routed through London. But the machinations were extraordinary. The second Grant Thornton report found that “on the balance of probabilities” the goal of all this was to keep Tubridy’s reported pay below €500,000 for each of the years and that the accounting treatment was “not sound”.

That’s putting it mildly. In RTÉ's official accounts, the €120,000 was counted as a liability in 2019 – because the broadcaster was expecting to have to pay it – and then written back in 2020. Paul Jacobs, the accountant from Grant Thornton, said this might have been done more cleanly, but it is not material to the RTÉ figures. So this was all broadly okay.

But a separate manoeuvre was done in terms of the high earners’ List. A decision was reached to “offset” the €120,000 bonus foregone by Tubridy against his 2017-2019 pay, details of which were published in early 2021. The ostensible rationale was that there were potential extra duties in the 2015 to 2020 contract which Tubridy had not been asked to undertake and that is was reasonable to deduct money from the reported payments for this reason.

In terms of either accountancy or common sense, that was a complete nonsense. It was clear from the earlier contract, unnamed RTÉ insiders told Jacobs, that the potential extra TV shows mentioned in the 2015 to 2020 contract were a “use it or lose it” from the station’s viewpoint – in other words, there was no expectation of money being repaid by the broadcaster if he was not asked to do the work.

While the presenter has paid a price, there is still ground for the Oireachtas committees to cover in investigating exactly what happened within RTÉ. But they need to concentrate their fire

And even if RTÉ had tried to do this via an accounting transaction with Tubridy, in which he agreed to the offset for the earlier years via a credit note, it would then have had to recognise the payment of the bonus in its 2020 high earners figures. In the event, the €120,000 was deployed in a completely erroneous manner. This surely raises questions for accountants Deloitte, which provided a view on this to RTÉ, as well as those involved in the organisation. All have their say in this week’s report, but Jacobs is clear that it should not have happened.

[ Did Bakhurst make the right call in showing Tubridy the door? ]

[ Tubridy and Bakhurst: What caused the breakdown of trust in RTÉ talks? ]

Interestingly, this week’s report also finds that in the negotiations on his subsequent contract, which started in 2020 – the one involving the Renault deal – part of the calculation shown in early internal RTÉ documents was to pay Tubridy more over a period of years to compensate him for forgoing the exit bonus in the previous contract. It even strangely appears to be counted twice in one draft, though we don’t know how exactly the final deal stacked up. And remember that the non-payment of this sum in 2020 was presented by RTÉ as a saving and by Tubridy as a concession on his part.

Now, with Tubridy gone – for now at least – the terms of that contract are no longer relevant. While the presenter has paid a price, there is still ground for the Oireachtas committees to cover in investigating exactly what happened within RTÉ. But they need to concentrate their fire – and the political system needs to give Bakhurst and the organisation room to move on as well.