Saving public Ryan: Committee performance may determine presenter’s future

Today we are going to witness one of the strangest auditions. Ryan Tubridy will appear before not one but two Oireachtas committees. Based on what the new management at the broadcaster has indicated, his future broadcasting career in Ireland may well hinge on his performances today.

If his explanation for how he received €345,000 over the past five years that was not previously publicly declared comes across badly then we could see the broadcaster’s value to RTÉ plummet quicker than bitcoin. The broadcaster has been off air since news of the payments emerged.

On his first day as director general of RTÉ, Kevin Bakhurst was non-committal about Tubridy’s future with the national broadcaster.

As our news report this morning states, Tubridy’s future is on the line in advance of his attendance at a meeting of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee at 11am in Leinster House, and then, at the Arts and Media Committee, at 3pm.

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[ Live coverage of Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly's appearance before two Oireachtas committees ]

The article highlights key lines from Bakhurst’s press conference on Monday. Asked about Tubridy’s future, Bakhurst said “we’ll see how the week goes and what comes out of it”.

A decision needs to be made soon about the former Late Late Show presenter’s future at RTÉ, Bakhurst said, “for Ryan’s sake and for everybody’s”.

In a reference to what was required of Tubridy, Bakhurst said he expected to see “maximum transparency”. Expect to see an apology too, delivered twice, at both committees.

His agent, Noel Kelly, who played a central role in negotiating the payments with RTÉ, is also to appear before the committees.

At issue will be the undeclared payments worth €345,000. The committee will ask Tubridy about the extent of his knowledge about the secret nature of the deals and why no flags were raised by him.

Tubridy said in his first statement that it was an issue for RTÉ rather than for him. If his explanation today is along those lines, it will need to be far more subtle.

Interestingly, Bakhurst referred to some of the robust questioning from committee members last week, which bordered on aggressive on one or two occasions, sailed close to the wind when it came to appropriateness. The judgment of the Supreme Court in the Angela Kerins case determined there were limits to what could be asked, and that members of Oireachtas Committees were not allowed to stray from the remit of the inquiry.

Both witnesses, who agreed to attend voluntarily, will be accompanied by a solicitor, the managing partner of Hayes Solicitors Joe O’Malley.

The TV and online audience for an Oireachtas Committee meeting will likely hit the stratosphere today, in anticipation of the country’s most famous broadcaster’s appearance. It’s not an overstatement to say that how he fares in front of two groups of politicians may determine his career in Irish broadcasting.

Here’s a guide on what to expect today.

National Maternity Hospital

It’s fair to say that on any other day, a Government decision on whether to relocate the National Maternity Hospital to the St Vincent’s Campus would be vying to top the news agenda.

But today, like everything else of the past three weeks, it has been eclipsed by the unfolding RTÉ crisis.

At the Cabinet meeting this morning, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly will seek approval to proceed to tender for the new hospital. If the Cabinet agrees, it will see the hospital move from Holles Street to the St Vincent’s campus in south Dublin.

The proposed relocation was the subject of controversy and opposition, amid claims the ethos of the religious order which owned St Vincent’s, the Sisters of Charity, would have a residual influence on the new hospital. This claim has been rejected strongly by the Government and by a majority of clinicians at the NMH.

Mr Donnelly’s memorandum to the Government will set out a proposal to co-locate the new hospital with the adult teaching hospital at St Vincent’s.

It is envisaged the new hospital will provide an expanded maternity and gynaecology services with an additional 80 beds over than the current capacity at Holles Street. Moreover, there will be no shared beds in wards with individual rooms for all patients.

The Government wants to proceed with the NMH move, notwithstanding the objections from the Opposition, and from some Green Party members, about whether it will be wholly free from the residual Catholic ethos of the trust that is in charge of St Vincent’s Hospital. The Coalition leaders believe it is.

Key Events in RTÉ Story Today

The first Oireachtas Committee hearing is due to start 11am. Tubridy and Kelly are expected to deliver opening statements to the committee by 8.30am. Brace yourself for the bad pun. That is a real late late show for pre-hearing statements. These are usually submitted to committees on the eve of the meeting.

In advance of the hearings, RTÉ last night provided a tranche of documents in response to further questions put to it by the PAC last week.

There was not a huge amount of new information in the 30 or so documents provided, including Ryan Tubridy’s five-year contract with the broadcaster and a lot of material on the loss-making Toy Show The Musical.

One document disclosed that 61 executives in the organisation had car allowances, from just over €1,000 per annum to €25,000 per annum. There is also a denial that the Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) barter account breached State Aid rules or Competition law. RTÉ also refused to specify who the four individuals who benefited from a total of €110,000 of hospitality (also, it’s not clear if the total payments were spent on them) at the Rugby World Cup.

And also, there is a reference to those who were consulted about the ill-fated Toy Show the Musical, when it was being conceived and in pre-production. Among those was Moya Doherty, the Riverdance founder and then chair of RTÉ.

Best Reads

Speaking of which, Toy Show The Musical is getting it in the ear on all fronts this week, after its €2.2 million losses were disclosed in the Oireachtas this week.

Fintan O’Toole, in an excellent column, sums it up when he says that the amount “RTÉ piddled away on Toy Show the Musical is close to 10 times the annual Arts Council funding for a breathtakingly good theatre company such as ANU. It’s 20 times what consistently brilliant Irish publishers such as Lilliput or Tramp Press get. It’s €1 million more public money than was invested in the wonderful Oscar-nominated film An Cailín Ciúin.”

In an interesting alternative take on Toy Show the Musical, Lisa Tierney-Keogh, a writer on the show, said it was a good idea but one that was destroyed by hubris.

Ben Briscoe, the former Fianna Fáil politician and Lord Mayor of Dublin has died at the age of 89.

And Bríd Smith, a People Before Profit TD, veteran socialist and climate change campaigner, has decided to step down at the next election.

Cabinet Agenda

The Cabinet meeting starts at 9am.

Darragh O’Brien will update colleagues on the Residential Tenancies (Right to Purchase) Bill.

The Bill will give tenants the opportunity to buy their home if it goes on market, with a ‘first right of refusal’, including a 90-day window to make an offer before it goes on open market. But there will be some delays because of complicated drafting issues.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly will also announce a non-statutory inquiry into the historical use of sodium valproate in certain groups of women. Sodium valproate is an oral medication which has been licensed and prescribed worldwide since the 1970s, primarily for the treatment of epilepsy. The drug has been licensed in Ireland since 1975.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin will update Cabinet on his intention to launch a public inquiry into systemic failings in how the Defence Forces handled complaints, following recommendation of a statutory inquiry in the IRG Report.

Dáil Éireann

2pm: Leaders’ Questions.

3.04pm: Bills for Introduction: Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2023 – First Stage

4.50pm: Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services) (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2023 – Second stage

6.20pm: Private Members’ Business (Sinn Féin): Motion re Housing and Homelessness

8.20pm: Parliamentary Questions: Oral – Minister for Justice

9.50pm: Topical Issues

10.38pm: Dáil adjourns

SEANAD

3.00pm: Commencement Matters

3.15pm: Energy (Windfall Gains in the Energy Sector) (Temporary Solidarity Contribution) Bill 2023 – Committee and Remaining Stages

5.00pm: Private Members’ Business: Disability (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023 – Second Stage

7.00pm: Seanad adjourns

COMMITTEES

10.30: Joint Committee on Assisted Dying. Engagement on the topic of developing a legal framework for assisted dying. Professor David Albert Jones, Director, Anscombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford. Professor Deirdre Madden, Professor of Law, University College Cork. Professor Mary Donnelly, Professor of Law, University College Cork.

10.30: PAC. (Starting at 11am) Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly appear to discuss “commercial arrangements entered into by RTÉ and its presenters, including those underwritten by RTÉ, which have impacted on and relate to the expenditure of public money.

15.00: Joint Committee on Arts and the Media

A second bit of the cherry for a second committee. Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly will appear again, this time to discuss matters relating to ongoing examination of transparency of RTÉ's expenditure of public funds and governance.

15.15: Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence.

Engagement with representatives from the Reserve Defence Forces Representative Association (RDFRA).

15.30 Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Launches its report on the future of youth work.

16.00 Select Committee on Justice

Committee Stage consideration of the Gambling Regulation Bill 2022 with James Browne, Minister of State at the Department of Justice