Ryan Tubridy’s – and his agent Noel Kelly’s – performance before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was a little bit like a runner in a middle-distance race who sets off too quickly: they were very impressive at the start but faltered in the later laps.
Overall, Tubridy probably did enough, as he put it, to begin rebuilding the trust with the Irish people.
But neither he nor Kelly emerged unscathed. Several of their claims did not stand up to scrutiny under questioning by PAC members over the controversial side deal brokered for Tubridy with the Late Late Show sponsor Renault.
In particular, Tubridy’s claim that he was subjected to a 20 per cent pay cut was more or less debunked by the committee. It was only 20 per cent when you didn’t factor in the side deal with Renault, worth €75,000 a year to Tubridy.
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Kelly was successful in arguing against the notion that it was all a secret and shady deal, kept hidden from everybody. However, few watching or listening to the deliberations would have been convinced that what happened was solely an RTÉ issue, and not one for Kelly or for his celebrity client.
At the PAC hearing, Labour TD Alan Kelly told Tubridy’s agent that at first he found the tranche of documents submitted to the committee – very late, at 8.30am on Tuesday morning, just hours before their highly anticipated appearance – “compelling” and provided a strong rebuttal to evidence given by RTÉ executives last week.
However, “my initial thoughts are beginning to fall apart a bit,” he said. “There was no 20 per cent drop in salary and to say so has no credibility whatsoever.”
Turning to the complex payment method, the Tipperary TD said there was an absence of credibility around Noel Kelly saying “about 15 times” that he was acting under RTÉ's instructions on the payments.
[ Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly blame RTÉ for payments saga during hours-long defenceOpens in new window ]
What surprised many onlookers was the forceful nature of Tubridy’s opening statement and anger in some of his responses to three hours of questioning by PAC members.
In the robust statement, he claimed that RTÉ's figures and statements had created “a fog of confusion” around his pay where “full transparency and disclosure on RTÉ's part” would have avoided the controversy.
Intent on setting “the record straight”, he said he wanted “to call out” what he claimed were seven “material untruths” that have emerged in the controversy around his pay.
Tubridy’s first claim of an untruth was that he had not taken a cut of 20 per cent in salary from 2021. Kelly said Tubridy’s average earnings between 2015 and 2020 were €525,000 and that his salary from 2021 was €420,000, amounting to a cut of €105,000. There was also an exit fee of €120,000 from his old contract that had been written off.
However, under the questioning of Marc Ó Cathasaigh of the Green Party, it was admitted that the €75,000 being paid from the agreement from Renault each year was not included in that calculation. If it were, the cut would be only in the order of less than 10 per cent.
Kelly and Tubridy argued that the deal with Renault was completely separate to the pay negotiations. Several TDs including Imelda Munster of Sinn Féin and Colm Burke of Fine Gael asked, if it was separate, why was this putative agreement included in negotiations on Tubridy’s new contract in the early months of 2021?
Interestingly, Kelly said that it was RTÉ that came up with the idea of this deal, not him.
Tubridy was on solid ground on his second “untruth”, which claimed he retired from The Late Late Show because of this controversy. Asked by John Brady of Sinn Féin, Cormac Devlin of Fianna Fáil and James O’Connor, also of Fianna Fáil, Tubridy argued strongly that his decision to leave the show had been made a year ago, long before this row erupted.
The third, fourth, fifth and sixth “untruths” dealt with claims that everything was done in secret, including the deal with Renault. Tubridy and Kelly were on solid ground here and had documentary evidence to show that senior executives in RTÉ were openly willing to guarantee the payment of €75,000 in the event that the deal went belly-up. It is also clear that the events Tubridy did for Renault were very public and were known.
[ Ryan Tubridy’s statement in full: RTÉ presenter outlines seven alleged ‘untruths’Opens in new window ]
The seventh “untruth” is shrouded in some confusion. Tubridy concedes he knew RTÉ under-declared his income for the years 2017 to 2019 and accepts he should have flagged it publicly. It came about, he said, because RTÉ retrospectively applied the 2020 exit fee of €120,000, which Tubridy never collected, as an accounting exercise. Subsequently, the figure was used to “reduce” his salary for the previous three years in its public statement of his earning, whereas in fact there was no reduction (he had got the salary – he had just never collected the exit fee, which was extra).
Where Kelly and Tubridy faced most difficulty was in explaining the side deal with Renault. Their argument was that it was completely separate from his salary and was a commercial agreement in its own right.
The pair also maintained that as far as they were concerned the deal was with Renault and not with RTÉ. In fact, Kelly revealed that Tubridy still “owes” Renault six public events in return for the €150,000 he was paid for year two and year three of the deal.
Committee members including Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster, Independent Verona Murphy, Paul McAuliffe of Fianna Fáil, Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats, PAC chairman Brian Stanley of Sinn Féin and Fine Gael’s Alan Dillon, who was among the most effective PAC interrogators, all focused on the big gaps of credibility.
Again and again they pointed out the inconsistencies. If it was a separate deal, why was it part of the salary negotiations? Why did RTÉ guarantee the payment if the sponsorship fell through?
If Renault was paying it, why did RTÉ give the car manufacturer a €75,000 refund in year one, effectively making it into a “contra” arrangement? Why did RTÉ follow such a convoluted route of making the payments in 2022 and 2023 when Renault withdrew from the arrangement?
It routed the payments through the famous barter accounts, with Tubridy paid not by RTÉ or by Renault, but by a company called Astus, based in London. Why did Noel Kelly invoice for “consultancy fees” when the invoice was essentially a payment to Ryan Tubridy? Why did he use a different company to make the payment? Was it credible that Kelly and Tubridy believed that Astus was Renault rather than RTÉ?
Kelly maintained over and over again he dutifully followed the instructions given to him by RTÉ.
Catherine Murphy TD described that as the “Nuremberg defence”.
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As for Tubridy, he finished with a grace note, a charming thank you to the PAC and a fervent wish that he be back on air with RTÉ as soon as possible.
That decision will depend on the view of RTÉ's new management team on his marathon performance in front of the two Oireachtas committees.
