Fintan O’Toole: Dee Forbes’s illness has implications that radiate far beyond Montrose

Dee Forbes is unwell. In normal circumstances, respect for her privacy would oblige us to leave it at that. But these are not normal circumstances. The illness of RTÉ's former director general (DG) has implications that radiate far beyond Montrose. It is undermining the most basic value of democracy: the accountability to parliament and the public of those who exercise power on our behalf.

The DG of the public broadcaster is one of the most influential people in Irish life. The job itself is unique, combining as it does the roles of chief executive and editor-in-chief. Forbes held that power in her hands for seven years. Over that period, somewhere in the region of €1.3 billion in licence fees paid by ordinary Irish people passed through those hands.

It is an absolute requirement of democracy that those who exercise such power and who spend so much public money are accountable for what they do and fail to do. Forbes herself recognises this imperative. As she put it in her resignation statement last June, “As director general, I am the person ultimately accountable for what happens within the organisation and I take that responsibility seriously.”

What happened included, of course, a secret financial deal with one of the station’s star presenters, the debacle of Toy Show: The Musical, the unravelling of a long-standing system of bogus self-employment for hundreds of RTÉ employees and some extraordinary exit packages for senior executives.

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Forbes is certainly not the only person with questions to answer about these matters but she is, as she acknowledges, by far the most important actor in each of these dramas. Without her active engagement, both internal RTÉ inquiries and Oireachtas committee hearings are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs without Snow White.

She has, however, declined on medical grounds to take part in any of those inquiries. Which is why her illness is not, as it otherwise should be, a private matter. If basic systems of accountability are not to be flouted, we have to ask what the nature of that illness might be and how it could be so severe that she can neither speak nor write.

What we do know is that Forbes has now been ill for at least seven months. She first referred to her condition on June 26th last year in her resignation statement: “I want to reiterate that I have engaged fully with the board during this process. However, the board has not treated me with anything approaching the levels of fairness, equity and respect that anyone should expect as an employee, a colleague or a person. All of this has had a very serious and ongoing impact on my health and wellbeing.”

Has her condition deteriorated over time? It would seem so. Up to last June, it allowed her to continue to function in a very demanding job. But according to the McCann Fitzgerald audit of exit payments, ‘Ms Forbes was unable to review and comment on or instruct her solicitor to respond to the draft report for medical reasons’

This suggests that Forbes was experiencing her illness for an unspecified period before June 26th. The “process” she refers to here was the Grant Thornton external review of payments to Ryan Tubridy commissioned by the RTÉ board’s audit and risk committee. The terms of reference for that review were given to Grant Thornton in April 2022. So it seems fair to surmise that the developments that Forbes identifies as the cause of her illness had been going on for some time while she was still DG.

But during that period she was at work and, so far as we know, fully functioning in a job that must involve answering dozens of questions every day. She was also able to take part in public events. On April 13th last, for example, she attended the banquet at Dublin Castle in honour of Joe Biden. Crucially, according to her statement, she was able, despite her condition, to “engage fully” with the RTÉ board in relation to the very issues that were, in her view, causing her illness.

This suggests that her illness is at least partially a question of psychological stress and, presumably, distress. It also suggests the illness had in no way impaired her mental capacities to engage with complex issues, including, quite specifically on her own account, the secret payments to Tubridy.

Has her condition deteriorated over time? It would seem so. Up to last June, it allowed her to continue to function in a very demanding job. But according to the McCann Fitzgerald audit of exit payments, “Ms Forbes was unable to review and comment on or instruct her solicitor to respond to the draft report for medical reasons”. Thus, it has reached a point where not only can she not answer questions in public or in private, in speech or in writing, but she cannot even read documents.

This raises existential questions about the very possibility of accountability. It is a given that anyone who is facing multiple inquiries into his or her decisions in high public office will be feeling great psychological stress. Being in that position is bloody awful and even the most robust of us would experience anxiety and anguish.

But if those feelings are in themselves a shield against legitimate scrutiny, we are facing a democratic crisis. Accountability disappears in a vicious circle: the questioning of potentially bad decisions causes stress and the stress means that the questioning has to stop. Every single holder of a senior public position can claim that a threat to his or her “wellbeing” trumps the democratic process and the public’s right to know.

This precedent cannot be established. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has the power to compel Forbes to attend its hearings and answer questions. If she refuses to do so on medical grounds, it has the power to ask for a medical certificate.

No one wants to see anyone’s personal angst become a public spectacle. But there is simply too much at stake here for the PAC to accept that anxiety or an unspecified illness frees powerful people from accountability. Otherwise, the sick note becomes a new form of total absolution.