Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he does have confidence in RTÉ's executive board but added it is an “emerging situation” and that he reserves the right to change his position “based on what happens in the coming days”.
Mr Varadkar said further revelations about additional barter accounts on Tuesday night were another “disquieting development” and the drip feed of information to Oireachtas committees and Government was doing “untold damage”.
He told the Dáil on Wednesday that RTÉ's chairwoman had confirmed they would be initiating a further investigation, led by Grant Thornton, of Toy Show: The Musical.
Mr Varadkar said to date “full transparency has been absent” from RTÉ's executive board and executives and that it had to change “immediately” while “full answers” must be given at the Oireachtas Arts Committee on Wednesday afternoon.
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The Taoiseach was responding to Sinn Féin deputy leader Pearse Doherty during Leaders’ Questions. Mr Doherty said he did not have confidence in the executive board and asked whether Mr Varadkar did.
Mr Doherty said: “We cannot trust the information” coming from the board and that the chief financial officer had told an Oireachtas committee last week there was only one barter account but it now turned out there were three.
“RTÉ needs to build trust again with the public and it’s clear that these executives are not the team to do it,” the Donegal TD said.
“They have told us there was only one barter account. Now either they didn’t know that there was three or it was sheer incompetence,” he said.
“They either deliberately misled the committee, or they simply didn’t know ... how can you have confidence in a chief financial officer who doesn’t know the number of accounts that is under his stewardship?”
In response, Mr Varadkar said there was more than one person on the executive board and “in any democracy in any decent society ... anyone should be afforded due process”.
“For me now to condemn en masse an entire executive board made up of several different people who would have had several different roles would not only be unfair, it would potentially leave the State open to compensation claims under constructive dismissal,” he said.
“I have to be conscious of looking after taxpayers’ money here, even if some people in RTÉ did not. I’m not at liberty to do what you’ve just done, which is to condemn en masse, the executive board and every member of it, that would leave this State open to challenge and I don’t want to put this State in that position.”
The Fine Gael leader said new RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst would be taking up his position quite soon, adding: “I’m sure he is going to want to reconstitute the executive board or perhaps get rid of it altogether.”
Mr Varadkar said Minister for Media Catherine Martin would be meeting RTÉ's chairwoman on Thursday and the Government intended to have a “forensic accountant” in place next week.
“We absolutely understand that the erosion of confidence has done enormous damage, and it’s imperative that full clarity around these and all issues is forthcoming without further delay,” he said.
Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said nearly three weeks into the “debacle”, the national broadcaster “still can’t even get its story straight”.
Ms Cairns said the performance of executives at both Oireachtas committees last week were “appalling” and were not forthright or transparent, while “information had to be dragged out of them”.
The Cork South-West TD said the failure to get basic information correct “raises serious questions about the board as a whole and their capacity to deal with this issue”.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the situation in RTÉ was “an unholy mess and scandal” and said there needed to be salary caps.
